To separate conversation from prompted scripts and interviewing, map Cyra's partner questions, scripts, visual supports, response prompts, rehearsed sequences, topic choices, spontaneous contributions, shared actions, repairs, and partner uptake. Supported conversation can include scripts and prompts. The assessment should identify what controls each exchange and whether the support serves Cyra's goal, rather than withholding useful support to prove spontaneity.

Map immediate antecedents

Record questions, comments, prompts, scripts, visual supports, topic cues, task events, silence, and Cyra's prior turn. One exchange can have mixed control.

Describe scripts neutrally

Version the script, authorship, purpose, access, optional status, adaptations, and whether Cyra chooses it. A script can provide access while remaining distinguishable from a new contribution.

Measure partner uptake

After Cyra contributes, record acknowledgment, elaboration, related action, follow-up question, topic change, correction, or no response. Uptake helps distinguish exchange from answer production.

Audit interview density

Compare questions, commands, prompts, comments, shared observations, waits, and topic offers. A conversation can become an interview when the partner controls nearly every opening.

Use this sequence for the differential

Version supports, map antecedents and turns, classify rehearsal and novelty, measure partner uptake, ask Cyra about usefulness, and adjust the environment before fading access.

Build Cyra's conversation-control differential

Create one versioned conversation-control differential for the community gardening workshop. Include Cyra's priority, partners, activity, modes, person-authored turns, topic and timing rules, latency, overlap, initiation, response, repair, script and prompt status, partner behavior, context, health, privacy, client experience, passes, invalidity, missingness, withdrawal, evidence limits, qualified owner, correction, and reassessment trigger. Store only decision-relevant information with role-limited access.

Validate Cyra's evidence

Reproduce 30 turns, 18 question responses, six rehearsed introductions, six new topics or actions, 22 partner questions, four comments, and four shared observations. Verify scripts, prompts, topic choice, shared action, repairs, uptake, consequences, and Cyra's preference.

Connect Cyra's evidence to a decision

Cyra's differential can support fewer questions, more comments, optional scripts, topic cards, partner uptake, or an alternate workshop role. The clinician should retain supports Cyra finds useful while measuring their role clearly.

Work through Cyra's example

Cyra has 30 workshop turns. Eighteen directly answer partner questions, six reproduce a rehearsed introduction, and six introduce new topics or actions without an immediate question. Partners ask 22 questions but offer four comments and four shared observations. The pattern describes an interview-heavy environment and several independently authored contributions. Preserve every planned and valid exchange, partner and setting version, communication mode, authored contribution, topic, timing, prompt, script, repair, partner action, access and health state, pass, withdrawal, invalid event, correction, and unresolved item. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It supplies no diagnosis, universal conversation hierarchy, treatment effect, legal conclusion, coverage decision, payment promise, or outcome guarantee for Cyra.

Address Cyra's main interpretation risk

Calling all 30 turns conversation hides question control and rehearsal. Calling the six scripted turns fake erases useful communication. Removing a visual script during a public workshop could increase burden without answering a decision. Review communication access, message authorship, turn rules, topics, timing, partner questions and waits, prompts, scripts, task cues, partner familiarity, context, health, fatigue, privacy, preference, direct experience, and design strength separately. A convincing sequence cannot make an unsafe, inaccessible, unwanted, unauthorized, or irrelevant conversation goal clinically appropriate.

Keep scope and authority clear for Cyra

For Cyra's conversation-control differential, the CASP public summary supplies high-level ABA behavioral-health-treatment scope for autistic people, with licensed detail outside this page. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, assessment, medical needs, risk, data, documentation, and evaluation for covered people. The BACB outline is examination content. These sources supply no individualized conversation norm, language diagnosis, legal authority, or requirement that Cyra speak, answer, or converse in a typical style.

Treat timing as dyadic and contextual for Cyra

The automated latency study analyzed recordings from 210 child-adult pairs and derived non-speech intervals between turns. It also measured adult-partner latency and linked change to a particular intervention dataset. A later turn-taking context study found that latency and overlap varied with activity and partner familiarity in its child samples. These studies support measuring both partners and context for Cyra. They supply no universal optimal speed, diagnostic cutoff, or reason to shorten AAC composition time.

Use topic categories descriptively for Cyra

The recent topic-shift study distinguished contingent responses, associated and non-associated shifts, reintroductions, explicit and implicit markers, and immediate partner prompts. Its coding system illustrates how one off-topic category can erase meaningful distinctions. It does not establish that topic continuation is better than change for Cyra or that a laboratory exchange captures everyday conversational fit.

Keep AAC, repair, and partner findings bounded for Cyra

An AAC intervention study involved four minimally speaking autistic children ages six to nine and targeted turn requests, question answers, and comments with peers. A longitudinal repair study compared several neurodevelopmental groups and defined repair as responding to a clarification request. These studies support explicit message, partner, repair, and context records. Their populations and procedures do not create one conversation curriculum, mastery rule, or expected outcome for Cyra.

Preserve assent and communication access for Cyra

Breaux and Smith propose individualized assent and withdrawal practices while describing an evolving evidence base. Their paper is practice guidance rather than a separate BACB mandate. ASHA's AAC portal says AAC users should always have access to their tools or devices. Give Cyra an accessible way to contribute, compose, pass, ask, repair, pause, end, or withdraw. Do not require speech, speed, eye contact, topic conformity, or social endurance as the price of participation.

Choose Cyra's next bounded action

Cyra keeps her introduction card and adds three chosen topic starters. Partners practice commenting on her contribution before asking another question. The next review tracks whether each partner contribution creates a genuine opening for Cyra to add, change, or close a topic. Record the qualified owner, source evidence, effective date, current partner, activity, mode, and context version, ordinary supports, communication and health state, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement route, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the earlier record when partners, vocabulary, devices, modes, topics, settings, outcomes, health, or priorities change. A repaired arrangement creates a dated phase rather than an error in Cyra's prior communication.

Close Cyra's assessment

Review the conversation-control differential with Cyra, the qualified behavior analyst, relevant partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that person-authored turns, partner turns, timing, topic relation, repair, scripts, prompts, question load, context, and client experience remain separate; every denominator is reproducible; AAC, privacy, and basic access remain protected; urgent needs received action; and conclusions stay bounded to sampled exchanges. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.

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