The chronography of interactions with autistic speakers: An initial report

doi:10.1016/0021-9924(82)90018-1

Journal of Communication Disorders

Volume 15, Issue 6, November 1982, Pages 451-460

https://doi.org/10.1016/0021-9924(82)90018-1 Get rights and content

Abstract

The aims of this study were to (a) describe the conversational time patterns of autistic persons capable of talking, and (b) examine the degree to which the autistic speakers synchronize the time patterns of their speech with those of the persons with whom they interact. Each of twelve autistic youths participated in two interactions, one with an experimenter and one with his or her parent. In addition, each parent engaged in a conversation with the experimenter. The results indicate that: (a) compared with those interactions involving the parents and experimenter, those involving the youths and parents exhibited longer switching pauses whereas those involving the youths and experimenter exhibited longer switching pauses and pauses; and (b) although the parents and experimeter achieved temporal synchrony in their interactions, there was no evidence that the youths achieved it with either the experimenter or their parents.

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Particularly the temporal coordination of turn taking, via the durations of switching-pauses (as defined by Jaffe & Feldstein, 1970) as partners exchange turns, termed the degree of vocal turn taking coordination, predicts outcomes. These outcomes include attachment in infancy (Jaffe et al., 2001; Hoffhines et al., 1996) and childhood (Markese et al., 2008); infant one-year cognition (Jaffe et al., 2001); language development (Northrup & Iverson, 2015); maternal sensitivity (Hane et al., 2003); maternal depression (Bettes, 1988; Zlochower & Cohn, 1996); autistic adolescents (Feldstein et al., 1982); dimensions of adult attachment (Beebe et al., 2015); and adult communication of mood, empathy, interpersonal attraction and therapeutic outcome (Crown, 1991; Jaffe & Feldstein, 1970; Holtz, 2004; Badalamenti & Langs, 1992; Shanahan et al., 2018). Notably, in the Jaffe et al. (2001) study, mother-infant switching-pause coordination predicted infant disorganized attachment, which has been linked to maternal history of childhood unresolved trauma.
Mothers who were pregnant and widowed on September 11, 2001, and their 4–6-month infants (in utero on 9/11) were filmed during face-to-face interaction and their vocal dialogues were examined via microanalysis. Mothers were White, well-educated, mean age 34.3 years, and far from the World Trade Center site on 9/11; infants were 4–6 months, half female. We examined the bi-directional, moment-by-moment co-regulation of the timing of vocal dialogue, and particularly turn taking, in mother-infant and stranger-infant interactions, with time-series models. We analyzed the contingent coordination of durations of (1) vocalizations of the turn-holder, and (2) switching-pauses at the moment of the turn exchange. The switching pause is an aspect of the rhythm of the turn-holder who, after taking a turn, yields the floor to the partner through the switching pause. Turn taking is the lynchpin of dialogue, and the bi-directional contingent coordination of the switching-pause regulates the turn exchange. Both partners showed signs of risk and resilience. The 9/11 mothers did not coordinate the timing of turn taking with their infants, a highly unusual finding. In contrast, the 9/11 infants did coordinate the timing of turn taking with their mothers, and with the “stranger,” forms of resilience. We propose that the 9/11 mother’s difficulty coordinating with the infant’s turn taking rhythm is a mode of transmission of her trauma to the infant. This work expands our knowledge of the specificities of co-regulation in the context of the 9/11 trauma.
Judgments of spoken discourse and impression formation of neurotypical and autistic adults
2021, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders
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Accordingly, eight scale items were included in the final analyses. Seven items targeted the content of the answers of the participants (1–7): relevance (item 1; Geelhand et al., 2020; Landa, 2000; Losh & Capps, 2003; Paul et al., 2009), referential cohesion (item 2; Colle et al., 2008; Fine et al., 1994; Geelhand et al., 2020), coherence (item 3; Baixauli et al., 2016; Geelhand et al., 2020; Stirling et al., 2014), pedantic style (item 4; (De Villiers et al., 2007; Ghaziuddin & Gerstein, 1996; Paul et al., 2009), rehearsed (item 5; Philofsky, Fidler, & Hepburn, 2007), fluency (item 6; Feldstein, Konstantareas, Oxman, & Webster, 1982; Geelhand et al., 2020; Irvine et al., 2016; Lake et al., 2011; Morett et al., 2016) and perseverance (item 7; De Villiers et al., 2007). To test whether participants noticed that some speakers were not neurotypical, we asked an additional question about speaker typicality (item 8).
Studies on impression formation in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have suggested that both ASD and neurotypical (NT) individuals extract paralinguistic cues (e.g., vocal and facial expressions) from brief extracts of social behaviors to form less favorable impressions of the personality traits of ASD individuals than of their NT peers. Yet, discourse studies in ASD have also suggested that there are specific linguistic features (e.g., conjunctions) that can distinguish the speech of ASD individuals from that of NT individuals. This study investigates whether naïve participants with and without autism can perceive discourse features previously identified as characteristic of ASD speech, based on a single exposure to conversation extracts.
A cross-design rating experiment was created whereby a group of ASD and NT adults (blind to diagnosis information) rated audio recordings involving ASD and NT speakers. Rating participants evaluated the recordings using a Likert scale targeting impressions of discourse features.
ASD and NT Raters behaved similarly on the ratings of discourse features; evaluating the speech of ASD Speakers less favorably than those of NT Speakers.
Our results extend previous findings by showing that linguistic cues also lead to less favorable impressions of the discourse of ASD Speakers, and this from both the perspective of NT and ASD Raters.
Correlates of social functioning in autism spectrum disorder: The role of social cognition
2017, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders
Citation Excerpt :
Core impairments with interpreting the social cues of others may also limit motor learning in ASD (Dawson & Bernier, 2007), as many motor skills are learned by watching others (Travers et al., 2015). The connection between motor function and social cognition in ASD may be evidenced by impairments in social synchronization, or the ability of two people to communicate while taking turns appropriately and match each other’s gestures and body language (Feldstein, Konstantareas, Oxman, & Webster, 1982; Fitzpatrick et al., 2016). This suggests the need to study the impact of both social cognition and motor function on social functioning in ASD.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience marked challenges with social function by definition, but few modifiable predictors of social functioning in ASD have been identified in extant research. This study hypothesized that deficits in social cognition and motor function may help to explain poor social functioning in individuals with ASD.
Cross-sectional data from 108 individuals with ASD and without intellectual disability ages 9 through 27.5 were used to assess the relationship between social cognition and motor function, and social functioning.
Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that greater social cognition, but not motor function, was significantly associated with better social functioning when controlling for sex, age, and intelligence quotient. Post-hoc analyses revealed that better performance on second-order false belief tasks was associated with higher levels of socially adaptive behavior and lower levels of social problems.
Our findings support the development and testing of interventions that target social cognition in order to improve social functioning in individuals with ASD. Interventions that teach generalizable skills to help people with ASD better understand social situations and develop competency in advanced perspective taking have the potential to create more durable change because their effects can be applied to a wide and varied set of situations and not simply a prescribed set of rehearsed situations.
Lack of eyeblink entrainments in autism spectrum disorders
2011, Neuropsychologia
Citation Excerpt :
We infer that the lack of eyeblink entrainment in ASD may be related more to a deficit in timing than to a deficit in imitation. Indeed, a previous study reported that children with ASD showed a less synchronous temporal pattern during conversations with their parents or the experimenters (Feldstein, Konstantareas, Oxman, & Webster, 1982). Evidence for their abnormal gaze timing was reported during dialogue interactions (Mirenda et al., 1983) and while viewing video clips in which individuals took turns in a dialogue (Nakano et al., 2010).
Interpersonal synchrony is the temporal coordination of movements between individuals during social interactions. For example, it has been shown that listeners synchronize their eyeblinks to a speaker's eyeblinks, especially at breakpoints of speech, when viewing a close-up video clip of the speaker's face. We hypothesized that this interpersonal synchronous behavior would not be observed in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which are characterized by impaired social communication. To test this hypothesis, we examined eyeblink entrainments in adults with ASD. As we reported previously, the eyeblinks of adults without ASD were significantly synchronized with the speaker's eyeblinks at pauses in his speech when they viewed the speaker's entire face. However, the significant eyeblink synchronization disappeared when adults without ASD viewed only the speaker's eyes or mouth, suggesting that information from the whole face, including information from both the eyes and the mouth, was necessary for eyeblink entrainment. By contrast, the ASD participants did not show any eyeblink synchronization with the speaker, even when viewing the speaker's eyes and mouth simultaneously. The lack of eyeblink entrainment to the speaker in individuals with ASD suggests that they are not able to temporally attune themselves to others’ behaviors. The deficits in temporal coordination may impair effective social communication with others.
Coordinated interpersonal timing in the conversations of children who stutter and their mothers and fathers
2007, Journal of Fluency Disorders
Coordinated interpersonal timing (CIT) is a measure of “conversational congruence,” or “attunement,” and refers to the degree to which the temporal aspects of the vocal behaviors of co-conversationalists are correlated over the course of a conversation [Jasnow, M., & Feldstein, S. (1986). Adult-like temporal characteristics of mother–infant vocal interaction. Child Development, 57, 754–761]. In the present study, CIT was examined in a group of children who stutter (CWS), and a matched group of nonstuttering children (CWDNS; children who do not stutter), during conversations with either their mother or father recorded in two separate sessions (i.e., mother–child, father–child). Separate audio signals for both the child and parent (mother or father) were analyzed using AVTA software, which allowed for the quantification of sound and silence patterns in simultaneous speech. Squared cross-correlations (i.e., coefficients of CIT) for the durations of five vocal behavior states were obtained for each subject, through time series regression analysis using lag procedures. Vocal state behaviors within conversational turns included: vocalization, pauses, turnswitching pauses, and interruptive and noninterruptive simultaneous speech. Results indicated that CWS and their parents showed mutual influence (i.e., CIT in both directions, child to parent and parent to child, or bi-directional influence) for more vocal state behaviors than did CWDNS and their parents. In addition, the CWS exhibited CIT with their parents for the durations of more vocal state behaviors than did the CWDNS (i.e., unidirectional influence). Findings suggest that children who stutter may be more easily influenced by the subtle timing aspects of conversation. Taken further, some of these children may perceive conversations with their parents as either challenging or difficult because of an element of unpredictability brought into conversations by the production of stuttering, the social skills of the child, and the nature of the parent–child relationship. Consequently, these children may be engaging in more pervasive coordination of the temporal characteristics of their speech to those of their conversational partner, as a mechanism by which to more effectively manage verbal interaction.
Educational objectives: After reading this paper, the learner will be able to: (1) describe the phenomenon of coordinated interpersonal timing (CIT); (2) summarize research findings in CIT as they apply to the verbal interactions of children and their parents; (3) summarize research findings in parent–stuttering child interaction, especially those related to the temporal aspects of both parent and child conversational speech, and (4) discuss the applicability of the findings from the present study to the treatment of childhood stuttering.
Early developmental backgrounds of autistic and mentally retarded children. Future research directions
1986, Psychiatric Clinics of North America
A brief account of the main diagnostic distinctions between autism and mental retardation is provided, which serves as the basis for reviewing available evidence on possible commonalities and differences in the developmental backgrounds of these two groups of children. Systematic comparisons in the histories of the two groups have rarely been undertaken, yet they are crucial for understanding the agents and processes uniquely associated with the genesis of each condition. Specific suggestions are made on some fruitful avenues for such comparative research undertakings.

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^☆: This paper was presented at the Ontario Psychological Association, Ontario, February 1981.

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The chronography of interactions with autistic speakers: An initial report☆

Abstract

An exploratory study of the chronography of psychotherapeutic interactions

Paper presented at the Society for Psychotherapy Research

Pragmatic deficits in the language of autistic adolescents

J. Pediatr. Psychol.

The kinesic rhythm of mother-infant interactions

Multiple responses to sound in dysfunctional children

J. Autism Child. Schiz.

Temporal aspects of “self-stimulating” behaviors in abnormal speakers

A comparison of interaction routines between an autistic child and two different adults

Emerging Language in Autistic Children

A chronography of conversation: In defense of an objective approach