Topic Maintenance in Social Conversation: What Children Need to Learn and Evidence This Can Be Taught

Autor/inn/en	Abbot-Smith, Kirsten; Dockrell, Julie; Sturrock, Alexandra; Matthews, Danielle; Wilson, Charlotte
Titel	Topic Maintenance in Social Conversation: What Children Need to Learn and Evidence This Can Be Taught
Quelle	In: First Language, 43 (2023) 6, S.614-642 (29 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Abbot-Smith, Kirsten) ORCID (Dockrell, Julie)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0142-7237
DOI	10.1177/01427237231172652
Schlagwörter	Individual Differences; Interpersonal Communication; Evidence Based Practice; Cognitive Ability; Communication Skills; Language Acquisition; Vocabulary; Grammar; Interpersonal Competence; Friendship; Teaching Methods; Comparative Analysis; Autism Spectrum Disorders; Peer Acceptance; Elementary School Students; Theory of Mind + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Individueller Unterschied; Interpersonale Kommunikation; Denkfähigkeit; Kommunikationsstil; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Wortschatz; Grammatik; Interpersonale Kompetenz; Freundschaft; Teaching method; Lehrmethode; Unterrichtsmethode; Autism; Autismus
Abstract	Individual differences in children's social communication have been shown to mediate the relationship between poor vocabulary or grammar and behavioural difficulties. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that social communication skills predict difficulties with peers over and above vocabulary and grammar scores. The essential social communicative skills needed to maintain positive peer relationships revolve around conversation. Children with weaker conversation skills are less likely to make and maintain friendships. While helping all children to participate actively in collaborative conversations is part of school curricula, evidence-based training on how to achieve this is rarely provided for teachers. In this review, we first provide an overview of the key components of conversation skills and the cognitive abilities required to maintain them. We then present a narrative review of randomised controlled trials and experimental studies that either trained child conversation skills or included conversation skills in both training and outcome measures. Most of the studies focussed on training conversational ability in autistic children. The general finding was that verbally fluent autistic children improve following conversation training on blind-assessed reciprocal conversational ability. Only two studies were found that trained conversation skills in typically developing children with adequate controls and outcome measures, which directly assessed conversational proficiency. Both studies focussed on typically developing children who, at baseline, were in the weaker third of the mainstream classroom. Importantly, training not only improved the conversational ability of these children, it also improved their rates of lunchtime interaction with peers and their peer popularity ratings. We argue that there is considerable potential for supporting conversation skills in the classroom as a universal or Tier 1 intervention. Future research should explore whether conversation skills training would benefit the whole classroom. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01