Playing with virtual peers: bootstrapping contingent discourse in children with autism

In this paper, we describe an intervention for children with social and communication deficits, such as autism, based on the use of a virtual peer that can engage in tightly collaborative narrative. We present a study in which children with autism engage in collaborative narrative with both a virtual and a human peer, and the use of contingent discourse is compared. Our findings suggest that contingent discourse increased over the course of interaction with a virtual peer, but not a human peer. Furthermore, topic management, such as introducing new topics or maintaining the current topic, was more likely to occur with the virtual peer than with the human peer. We discuss general implications of our work for understanding the role of peer interactions in learning.