Social communication development in a contingent world: insights from autism

Abstract Children learn to communicate via real-time behavioural feedback loops with their social partners (e.g. infant vocalizes, caregiver responds and infant learns from the response). Across development, feedback loops become increasingly complex as children master new skills, engage in new activities, interact with a growing network of social partners, and thus elicit a tremendous variety of social responses. For autistic individuals, these feedback loops unfold in distinct ways. Autistic people’s social behaviours (like gaze, gestures and language) differ from the behaviours of non-autistic people; as a result, they elicit different input from social partners, which then has cascading impacts on future social behaviour. Here, we review literature on the mechanisms that underpin social communication development in autism from infancy through adulthood. We discuss how changes in abilities (e.g. motor, cognitive, emotion, communication), social demands and environmental contexts (e.g. interactions with peers) influence the social contingency experiences of autistic individuals. We propose that differences in real-time behavioural feedback loops contribute, in part, to broader developmental trends in autism (e.g. the pace of language learning). Research from neurodiverse samples offers insights into how feedback loops facilitate social communicative development broadly and has real-world implications for clinical and educational initiatives. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Mechanisms of learning from social interaction’.