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Analysing Interactive Competencies 121a greeting” unless it occurs in a specific location, namely in certain openingturns in an interaction ([12], vol. 2, p.36, p.188).It is the capacity to address the organisation of embodied action, whichmakes CA particularly relevant for examining robot-child interactions. In additionto examining vocal resources for interaction, CA has also been appliedto body movement (in a somewhat different way to the pioneering work ofKendon, [8]), e.g. [3]). It has also been applied to interactions with, or involving,non-human artifacts (such as computers [2]). We aim to provide abrief illustration of the relevance of CA to examining both the interactionalcompetencies of children with autism and their interactions with the robot bysketching some details from a preliminary analysis of an eight minute sessioninvolving one boy, Chris (C), the robot (R) and a researcher (E).Whilst pragmatic communicative competence is not traditionally attributedto people with autism (indeed the iconic image of the Autist is that of beingisolated and self-absorbed) attention to the autistic child’s activities in theirinteractional context can reveal communicative competence which might otherwisebe missed. It can be established that when the context is considered,many of Chris’s actions (vocal and non-vocal) can be seen to be responsive tothings that the robot does. For example at one point Chris emits a surprisedexclamation “oooh!”. Extract 1 in figure 14.3 shows that this is evidently responsiveto a sudden approach from the robot.Figure 14.3.Extracts of transcriptions.This attention to sequential organisation can provide a refreshing perspectiveon some of the ‘communication deficits’ often thought characteristic of