Conversational Latency in Autistic Children With Heterogeneous Spoken Language Abilities

Conversational latency entails the temporal feature of turn-taking, which is understudied in autistic children. The current study investigated the influences of child-based and parental factors on conversational latency in autistic children with heterogeneous spoken language abilities.

Participants were 46 autistic children aged 4-7 years. We remotely collected 15-min naturalistic language samples in the context of parent-child interactions to characterize both child and parent conversational latency. Conversational latency was operationally defined as the time it took for one individual to respond to their conversational partner using spoken language. Naturalistic language samples were transcribed following the Systematic Analysis for Language Transcripts convention to characterize autistic children's spoken language and parental spoken language input. Autistic children's spoken language was measured using number of different words (NDW). The quality and quantity of parental spoken language input was assessed using NDW, mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm), and frequency of words per minute (WPM). Additional child-based factors, including receptive language and socialization skills, were evaluated using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Spearman correlation and regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationships between those child-based and parental factors and child conversational latency.

Older autistic children showed longer conversation latencies. Longer parent conversational latency was associated with longer child conversational latency after controlling for age. Greater parental WPM was associated with shorter child conversational latency after controlling for age. Child conversational latency was not associated with their spoken language, receptive language, or socialization skills. Child conversational latency was not associated with parental NDW and MLUm.

Our findings highlight the interaction loop between autistic children and their parents in everyday interactions. Parents adjusted their timing and quantity of spoken language input to ensure smooth conversational turn-taking when interacting with their autistic children.