Conversational Topic Shifts and Topic Maintenance in Autistic and Neurotypical Children

Topic maintenance and topic shifts are crucial components of conversation; however, existing research lacks a clear quantitative operationalization of these topic management skills. Previous studies suggest that autistic children are less likely than their neurotypical peers to maintain and elaborate on the interlocutor's prior topic, and that they shift topics inappropriately more often. Nevertheless, findings on topic maintenance remain inconclusive, and studies specifically investigating topic shifts are limited. Moreover, little is known about the conversational skills of autistic children from non-English-speaking contexts. We investigated topic maintenance and shifting in 43 autistic and 46 age-matched neurotypical Spanish-speaking children (M = 8.55, SD = 1.91) during a semi-spontaneous conversation task. Given their important role in social interactions, we developed a theoretically grounded protocol for systematically coding topic shifts, supported through a rating task conducted with neurotypical adults. Results showed that although autistic and neurotypical children provided a comparable number of topic-supporting responses, autistic participants produced significantly more topic shifts. Furthermore, autistic children's topic shifts corresponded to a less natural end of the empirically supported rating scale, indicating such topic shifts interrupted the conversation flow more drastically. These findings suggest that, while autistic children may not have difficulties maintaining a conversation topic, the frequency and nature of their topic shifts could challenge reciprocal conversations. Our study presents a coding scheme that captures relevant distinctions in how different topic shifts are perceived in conversation, serving as a valuable resource for research and clinical practice in assessing and supporting the conversational skills of autistic individuals.