Seeing it in others versus doing it yourself: Social desirability judgements and conversation production data from autistic and non-autistic children.

On average, groups of autistic individuals are more likely than groups of non-autistic individuals to exhibit unconventional conversational behaviours. We examined autistic and non-autistic children's social impressions of unconventional responding, as well as actual conversational behaviours in the same participants. Across two studies, 36 autistic and 36 non-autistic matched 9-13-year-olds listened to conversational vignettes which manipulated the relevance and timing of responses produced by the speaker. They then rated the speaker's social desirability. We also measured the content and latency of the same children's conversational responses. Autistic children aligned with their non-autistic peers in indicating that they were less likely to befriend, or enjoy interacting with, a speaker who provided off-topic or delayed responses. However, the same autistic children provided more off-topic, and fewer topic-continuing, conversational responses than their non-autistic counterparts. These findings suggest that displaying unconventional conversational behaviours may act as a barrier to friendship or inclusion for autistic children, even when socialising with other autistic peers.Lay abstractDuring a conversation, on average, autistic individuals are often more likely than non-autistic people to provide an off-topic comment and/or to pause for longer before providing a response. One possible explanation for this is that autistic individuals prefer, or are more tolerant of, unconventional communication styles. To explore this possibility, we investigated whether autistic and non-autistic 9-13-year-olds find off-topic or delayed responding a deterrent to friendship or interaction. Participants listened to scripted conversations and then rated social desirability statements, such as 'I would enjoy chatting to the [target speaker]'. We also examined the prevalence of these behaviours in children's own conversational responses. We found that autistic children were just as likely as non-autistic children to dis-prefer unconventional conversational responding. Both groups indicated that they were less likely to want to be friends with the speaker, or to chat with them, when they provided off-topic or delayed responses. However, despite their judgements of others, the same autistic children were more likely to provide off-topic responses themselves than their non-autistic peers, as well as giving fewer on-topic responses which facilitate back-and-forth conversation. Overall, this is problematic for autistic children, as our findings suggest that the tendency to exhibit unconventional conversational behaviours will have negative social consequences, even when interacting with other autistic peers.