Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) involves trouble with social communication, which includes speaking, eye contact, gestures, and facial expression. Even individuals with average language skills struggle to stay on topic or take proper turns listening, and they miss humor. These differences make it hard to build and understand rapport, leading to difficulties with employment and relationships. Although it is very important to identify the abnormal qualities of ASD conversation, there are few ways to measure them. Recently, a social scoring system for conversation samples has been developed that illustrated differences between people with and without ASD during a story-retell. The current study has two goals: (1) to test the social scoring on a more natural conversation sample; and (2) to compare the conversation social scores with scores from a standardized social communication questionnaire. Adolescents with average language skills with (n=15) and without (n=15) ASD will participate in a mock interview. The social scoring system will be used to score the interviews, resulting in pragmatic and semantic scores. Scores of ASD and control participants will be compared using independent samples t-tests. Additionally, ASD participants’ parents will complete a validated measure that identifies social impairment associated with ASD. A correlational analysis will be run to compare the social scores from the mock interview with the Social Communication score of the parent report measure. Results may validate the conversation analysis as a way to determine social communication scores through direct assessment of individuals with ASD, instead of relying on the reports of others.
