Topic maintenance in social conversation: What children need to learn and evidence this can be taught

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.

Introduction to the special section on topic maintenance in social conversation

“…University College London, UK This special section of First Language features a review article by Abbot-Smith et al (2023a) titled 'Topic maintenance in social conversation: What children need to learn and evidence this can be taught' plus commentaries by Bryant (2023), Hindman and Chor (2023), and Snow et al (2023), followed by a response by Abbot-Smith et al (2023b).…”

“…Keeping a conversation going is arguably harder than initiating or ending it: speakers need to follow and build on the conversational topic, achieve conversational balance by contributing not too much or too little, and respond with appropriate timing. After reviewing the evidence that training conversational skills in particular groups of children (autistic children; socially isolated children) can have positive outcomes, Abbot-Smith et al (2023a) argue that ‘future research should investigate the acceptability and feasibility of teaching social conversation in mainstream primary-school classrooms within a whole-classroom approach’ (p.616). In other words, they make the case that educators should support the development of social conversation skills in all pupils (i.e.…”

“…How something should be taught and how much time should be set aside for teaching it, as well as the most appropriate age and relevant target group(s) for such teaching, are of course empirical questions, and they are composed of two halves. As indicated in the title of the article by Abbot-Smith et al (2023a), we need (1) an evidence base regarding how children learn, which can be used as the basis for developing teaching, and then (2) an evidence base assessing the effectiveness of that teaching. It is not always the case that Step (1) leads to teaching practices that are successful when evaluated at Step (2).…”

Hastening slowly on classroom-based conversational skills teaching: A commentary on Abbot-Smith et al., 2023

“…In their article 'Topic maintenance in social conversation: what children need to learn and evidence this can be taught', Abbot-Smith et al (2023) undertake an ambitious review of the typical development of conversational discourse skills and factors that can both support and interfere with this process. It is appropriate that the authors place considerable emphasis on developmental stages, executive functioning and mentalising (Theory of Mind) to describe the complexity and variability in what has been described as a 'biologically primary' skill (Geary, 2008) -that is, one that humans have an evolutionary advantage for developing, and in most cases, do not need to be 'taught'.…”

“…The inclusion of Tier 2 and 3 services would provide support to children in need rather than additional time at a Tier 1 for those who do not require this. The areas of focus would depend on the needs of the children receiving the Tier 2 and 3 supports but could include many of the conversational subcomponents outlined by Abbot-Smith et al (2023) such as maintaining a conversation and following a conversation topic as it shifts. Such supports would also provide children with authentic opportunities to develop their conversational skills with their age-peers.…”