Toward Neurodiversity: How Conversation Analysis Can Contribute to a New Approach to Social Communication Assessment.

This article suggests a new way to assess how autistic children communicate socially. Instead of focusing on what children can't do, this approach looks at how communication happens between people in real conversations. The researchers used this method with a bilingual autistic child and found social communication strengths that other assessments might miss or see as problems. This approach values autistic ways of communicating rather than seeing them as deficits.

This clinical focus article proposes using conversation analysis (CA) as a neurodiversity-affirming approach to assess social communication in autistic children. Rather than adding another assessment tool, the authors argue for reconceptualizing social communication competence from an individual deficit to an interactional achievement. Through a case study of a bilingual autistic child, they demonstrate how CA can identify social communicative strengths that traditional assessments might pathologize. The approach shifts focus from viewing autism as individual impairment to understanding communication as relational and contextual.

This methodology aligns with critical disability perspectives and challenges traditional speech-language pathology assumptions about autistic social communication.

May inform development of neurodiversity-affirming assessment approaches that recognize autistic communication competencies. Could influence speech-language pathology practice to move beyond deficit-focused models toward relational understanding of social communication. Requires further empirical validation before clinical implementation.

This is a theoretical article with a single case illustration rather than empirical research. No sample size or systematic methodology is reported. The evidence is conceptual rather than based on controlled studies, limiting generalizability of findings.

The purpose of this clinical focus article was to illustrate the potential of employing conversation analysis (CA) as a method for assessing social communication that is neurodiversity affirming. This clinical focus article will provide an overview of CA and explain how it offers a theoretically grounded means of analyzing autistic children's everyday social interactions. Our aim is not simply to add a new assessment instrument to the disciplinary toolbox but to use the occasion to spur a reconsideration of how social communicative competence is currently conceptualized in the field and how those assumptions are reified through assessment practices. We will present a case illustration of a bilingual autistic child and his family.

We will discuss the implications of a CA-informed assessment for reconceptualizing autistic social communicative competence. The case study illustrates the contributions of CA for (a) shifting the focus of assessment from social communication as an individual skill to social communication as an interactional achievement and (b) surfacing social communicative competencies that may be dismissed as pathologies. CA offers a relational understanding of autistic communication and sociality that is compatible with a critical stance on disability. Insights from CA problematize deeply entrenched notions of autism and social communication in speech-language pathology.