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Dialog-driven conceptual alignment in autistic, non-autistic, and mixed adolescent dyads
Poster Session A, Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Jana Bašnáková1,2, Miriam Poncelet-Romaneli2, Hana Bilíková1, Bruno Galantucci3, Ivan Toni2; 1Institute of Experimental Psychology CSPS, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia, 2Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, The Netherlands, 3Yeshiva University, United States
Human conceptual systems are inherently flexible and partially idiosyncratic: interlocutors must continuously adapt their referential conventions in order to achieve mutual understanding. Previous work has shown that dialogue can reshape and stabilize conceptual representations in neurotypical dyads (Poncelet-Romaneli et al., 2025), yet little is known about how these adaptive processes unfold in dyads whose members are on the autistic spectrum, particularly given frequently reported differences in communicative style and interaction dynamics (Velikonja et al., 2019; Milton et al., 2022). In the present study, we used a collaborative referential communication paradigm (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986) to investigate interactional flexibility and the emergence of shared conceptual structure in dyads composed of same-neurotype (both autistic or non-autistic) or mixed-neurotype (one autistic, one non-autistic) participants. We report preliminary observations from an interim analysis of a partial sample. Fifty-six adolescents aged 14–17 years were arranged in 28 gender-matched dyads (10 autistic, 8 non-autistic, 10 mixed). In each trial, only one member (director) of the dyad had access to the correct ordering of novel geometric figures, requiring both members to collaboratively develop referential expressions through dialogue. Across 24 alternating director–matcher trials involving 12 figures, the task was designed to maximize the need for dynamic partner adaptation. Before and after the interaction, participants individually completed a nonverbal similarity-rating task for all figure pairings. We operationalized conceptual alignment as the extent to which within-dyad similarity judgments became more aligned from pre- to post-dialog, quantified using representational similarity analyses. This measure was intended to capture interaction-driven restructuring of shared conceptual representations rather than simple convergence on pair-specific lexical labels. Although autistic dyads showed lower communicative efficiency overall, including more repair sequences and lower accuracy (mean accuracy: ASD = 89.4%, NT = 97.1%, mixed = 94.2%; Kruskal–Wallis p = .025), all dyad types demonstrated comparable communicative dynamics across the task. Trial-by-trial learning trajectories were quantified by fitting a linear regression to communicative duration across trials for each dyad. All groups showed progressively shorter time necessary to reach understanding, with similarly rapid reduction in trial duration across groups (regression slopes: −4.18 for autistic, −3.84 for non-autistic, −3.40 for mixed dyads), despite substantially greater duration variability in autistic dyads. Analyses of the final four referential expressions produced for each figure revealed comparable levels of uniqueness and descriptive complexity across groups, with no evidence that autistic dyads relied on a narrower or more repetitive set of conventions over time. At the representational level, participants who interacted together (real dyads) showed significantly enhanced (p = .013) conceptual alignment relative to pairs of participants who completed the task, but did not interact together (pseudo dyads). The strength of conceptual alignment changes may vary across dyad type. These findings highlight the importance of studying dynamic interactional contexts across different neurotypes. The preliminary observations suggest that communicative efficiency and conceptual adaptation may rely on partially distinct mechanisms. Ongoing analyses are exploring whether interactional dynamics, including linguistic adaptation and eye-movement coordination, predict conceptual alignment during dialogue.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics, Disorders: Developmental