Among characteristics of children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS) are
difficulties in social communication. This study describes the social communicative
competence of two middle school children with AS participating in conversations in
three different situational contexts. The conversations were transcribed and
submitted to three kinds of analysis: 1) analysis of the distribution of the
conversational load, 2) Damico's (1985) Clinical Discourse Analysis (CDA),
and 3) analysis of interchange types and illocutionary force. Whereas some
similarities were observed, the children presented with distinct profiles of social
communicative competence. Clinical implications are presented for each child.
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