Managing interactional breakdowns with children with ASD: Therapists' practices when directives face challenges in therapeutic interactions.

Effective interventions to promote language competence, cognitive abilities and integrate these skills into daily activities for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often involve providing guidance and training through specific tasks, typically delivered by speech and language therapists th...

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Publicado en:Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics Vol. 40; no. 5; pp. 395 - 423
Autores principales: Ma, Xiaoxin, Ma, Wen, Zhang, Shuai
Formato: pictorial research tables/charts tracings Journal Article
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd May2026
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd
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        atl: Managing interactional breakdowns with children with ASD: Therapists' practices when directives face challenges in therapeutic interactions.
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        au:
          Ma, Xiaoxin
          Ma, Wen
          Zhang, Shuai
        affil: Centre for Clinical Neurolinguistics, School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Shandong University, Jinan, China
      sug:
        subj:
          Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapy
          Cognition Evaluation
          Task Performance and Analysis
          Speech-Language Pathologists
          Communication
          Speech Disorders Therapy
          Speech Therapy Methods
          Language Therapy Methods
          Professional Role
          Professional-Patient Relations
          Human
          Male
          Female
          Child
          Linguistics
          Data Collection Methods
          Audiorecording
          Descriptive Statistics
          Funding Source
          Child: 6-12 years
          Male
          Female
      ab: Effective interventions to promote language competence, cognitive abilities and integrate these skills into daily activities for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often involve providing guidance and training through specific tasks, typically delivered by speech and language therapists through directive interactions. However, engaging children with ASD in such activities is not straightforward and often fraught with challenges. Yet we know very little about how practitioners cope when the interaction breaks down, for example, due to misunderstandings or failures to engage. This study employs a conversation analytic approach to uncover therapists' intricate practices for managing breakdowns in therapeutic interactions. Over 200 hours of naturally occurring interactions between seven Mandarin-speaking children and their therapists were recorded and analysed. Using Conversation Analysis, we identified and analysed 1062 directive turns issued by therapists and subsequent responses of the children. The findings are in three aspects: 1) A crucial and effective premise for increasing engagement and improving the quality of therapeutic interactions lies in recognising, ascribing and utilising the specific interactive modes of children with ASD, including their repeated utterances and prosodic resources. 2) Therapists' strategies are successful when they flexibly address and adapt the format of directives through tailored verbal iteration and embodied solicitation. 3) The importance of timing underscores the increased opportunities to positively influence turn-taking in children with ASD. It is proposed that practitioners can enhance their understanding of children with ASD by incorporating the profiling of interaction into their assessments and interventions, adapting ways to align with the unique patterns of children with ASD.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
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        pictorial
        research
        tables/charts
        tracings
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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