Conversations involving people with communication disorders or other forms of communicative impairment, such as those with dementia, autism, aphasia, or hearing impairment, differ in systematic ways from typical conversations (i.e., those involving participants without significant communicative or cognitive challenges). Drawing from CA work over the last few decades, this chapter discusses methodological issues involved in data collection in this field and in the transcription and analysis of these types of data. Analysis of the ways in which these interactions are distinctive and ‘atypical’ as regards social actions and the practices used in their construction and deployment involves a form of comparative analysis drawing on CA findings concerning typical interaction. The chapter also discusses other, more explicit, forms of comparative analysis regularly undertaken in this field, including comparison of participants’ conversations over time, and the comparison of how conversations involving participants with one type of communicative impairment compare with those of participants with a different form of impairment. One way in which the latter type of investigation can be developed is discussed in relation to a certain interactional feature – here, interruptive, other-initiation of repair – and how it may be traced across conversations involving participants with different communicative impairments.

In this chapter I outline the features of common neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), the link between NDD and special educational needs and disability, and types of school attendance problems that occur for young people with NDD. I discuss common contributing factors to problems with school attendance for young people with NDD at the individual and school levels. Suggestions for promoting attendance and understanding attendance problems for young people with NDD are discussed throughout. Young people with NDD are at higher risk than their peers of having many of the risk factors for poor school attendance: low academic achievement, sensory difficulties, physical health problems, poor social or academic skills, co-occurring conditions, difficulty verbally communicating anxiety or frustration, being bullied, having difficulties with relationships, and low self-esteem. School absences in these young people may be due to a multitude of reasons, embedded in complex social conditions including family and school factors. Adaptations to the school environment and individually focussed cognitive and behavioural approaches adapted to the needs of young people with NDD are most likely to help in addressing problems with school attendance. Effective management, support and treatment of symptoms due to NDD is likely to improve the school attendance of these young people.