| Summary: | It is well-accepted that social interaction skills are generally impaired in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Children with ASD are commonly reported to be incompetent in partaking in reciprocal interactions, including in establishing joint engagement with other people. This PhD project examines naturally-occurring play interaction involving Malay-speaking children with ASD aged between 3;0 to 6;11 years and their mothers. The data consists of video recorded material collected from 10 hours of freeplay sessions between the child and adult participants. Comparative data from typically developing Malay-speaking children are also examined to ensure a thorough analysis of the Malay-speaking children. This study deploys conversation analysis to explore joint engagement (non)establishments in interactions involving Malay-speaking children. Specifically, the aims are to scrutinise the children's responsive actions to maternal bids for joint engagement during play and to consider the interactional resources that may be utilised by the children as they comply with or decline their mothers' projection for an engagement. The study also aims to examine the mothers' initiating engagement actions and finally to use the findings from this CA-based study to consider joint engagement frameworks. The analysis reveals the children with ASD's interactional competencies in handling joint engagement initiations. Despite evidence of atypicalities in their bodily and language use, children with ASD are found to demonstrate capabilities in producing fitted responsive actions following maternal bids by manipulating verbal and bodily behaviours thus allowing joint engagement to establish. The children also demonstrate effective skills to resist an engagement. The children with ASD also demonstrate behaviours that are not seen in the typically developing children dataset namely withholding a response despite having displayed their noticing of a bid, and displaying total non-orientation to a bid. The analysis also shows the different designs of the maternal bids that are crucial for pursuing and securing the children's engagement. The results indicate the feasibility of Conversation Analysis as a methodology to examine joint engagement establishment in specific and interactional abilities of children with ASD in general. Clinical implications of the current work are also discussed.
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