Background and aims Having a conversation with someone or even more within a group of people is complex. We are never taught at school how to do it, which implies we consider having a conversation as something simple and straightforward. Instead, we just learn from observing others. Some people are great conversationalists - it comes naturally to them - while others struggle. Some people may not fully understand how the process works, how turn-taking happens, don't understand visual cues such as body language and facial expressions, and fail to comprehend that some topics may be appropriate or inappropriate. This can be the case for both neurotypical and neurodivergent people. The Conversation skills Assessment Tool has been developed in this first instance to help in assessing and examining conversation skills in an intervention with young autistic adults on a virtual platform (a virtual world). This paper will present the evolution of the new measure through the exploratory phase, the development phase and finally a detailed account of the inter-rater reliability process. Methods The intervention associated with this study was carried out though a multiple baseline design with 3 autistic participants (in their early 20 s) and took place over 4 phases (15-17 sessions). The sessions involved semi-structured conversations in face-to-face (phases 1 and 4) and virtual (phases 2 and 3) settings and were videotaped with the participants' consent. Twelve of those were used by this study in the development process through iterative inter-rater reliability stages between two coding teams. Results Evaluation of the Conversation skills Assessment Tool tool revealed the potential benefit of implementing interventions with measures that more objectively and concretely (e.g., by noting frequencies) assess observable behaviours that are associated with having positive conversations with others. Beyond this, it is anticipated that Conversation skills Assessment Tool can emerge as a tool capable of not only accounting for the environment an interaction takes place in (e.g., professional, casual), but also offers beneficial feedback for both autistic students and other populations (e.g., young children, English language learners). Conclusions This measure has the potential to offer quantifiable and trackable guidance to people who have difficulties conversing. The authors do not wish to perpetuate an ableist social construct of what is a 'good' conversation, nor do they suggest that conversation skills training is useful solely for people with communication and/or socialization difficulties. Rather, they hope that Conversation skills Assessment Tool can be adopted more broadly to give both neurotypical and neurodivergent people a better understanding of how to communicate more effectively with others, while also becoming more aware and accepting of differing conversational styles. Implications Because of its ability to track (or self-monitor) one's development of conversational skills over time, Conversation skills Assessment Tool could serve as an educative tool in early childhood education. It can be used by occupational/speech therapists and other professionals and also used to self-monitor one's development of conversational skills. Conversation skills Assessment Tool was developed to assess conversation skills on a one-to-one basis; therefore, another iteration of Conversation skills Assessment Tool would have to look at group conversations.

中文翻译：

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会话技能评估工具的开发。

背景和目标 与某人甚至一群人中的更多人进行对话是很复杂的。学校从来没有教过我们如何去做，这意味着我们认为对话是简单而直接的事情。相反，我们只是通过观察他人来学习。有些人很健谈——这对他们来说是很自然的——而另一些人则很困难。有些人可能不完全理解这个过程是如何运作的，轮流是如何发生的，不理解肢体语言和面部表情等视觉线索，并且无法理解某些主题可能合适或不合适。对于神经典型和神经分歧的人来说都是这种情况。对话技能评估工具的开发是为了帮助评估和检查在虚拟平台（虚拟世界）上对年轻自闭症成人进行干预时的对话技能。本文将通过探索阶段、开发阶段以及最后对评估者间可靠性过程的详细说明来介绍新测量方法的演变。方法 与本研究相关的干预是通过 3 名自闭症参与者（20 岁出头）的多基线设计进行的，并分 4 个阶段（15-17 次）进行。这些会议涉及面对面（第 1 阶段和第 4 阶段）和虚拟（第 2 阶段和第 3 阶段）环境中的半结构化对话，并在参与者同意的情况下进行了录像。本研究在开发过程中通过两个编码团队之间的迭代评估者间可靠性阶段使用了其中的 12 个。结果 对话技能评估工具的评估揭示了实施干预措施的潜在好处，这些措施可以更客观、更具体（例如，通过记录频率）评估与他人积极对话相关的可观察行为。除此之外，预计对话技能评估工具可以成为一种工具，不仅能够解释互动发生的环境（例如，专业的、休闲的），而且还可以为自闭症学生和其他人群提供有益的反馈（例如，幼儿、英语学习者）。结论 这项措施有可能为交谈有困难的人提供可量化和可追踪的指导。作者不希望延续“良好”对话的体能主义社会结构，也不认为对话技能培训仅对有沟通和/或社交困难的人有用。相反，他们希望对话技能评估工具能够得到更广泛的采用，让神经典型和神经分歧的人更好地理解如何与他人更有效地沟通，同时也更加了解和接受不同的对话风格。含义 由于对话技能评估工具能够跟踪（或自我监控）一个人的对话技能随时间的发展情况，因此对话技能评估工具可以作为幼儿教育中的教育工具。它可供职业/言语治疗师和其他专业人员使用，也可用于自我监控一个人的会话技能的发展。开发对话技巧评估工具，一对一评估对话技巧；因此，对话技能评估工具的另一次迭代必须考虑小组对话。