“Studies of Autistic Traits in the General Population Are Not Studies of Autism”, 2021-11-26 (; similar):
Studies of autistic traits in the general population are becoming increasingly prevalent. In this letter to the editor, we caution researchers against framing and interpreting studies of autistic traits in the general population as extending to autism and implore them to be clear about when their study sample does and does not include autistic participants.
[Keywords: autism quotient, autism traits, autistic traits, broad autism phenotype]
A recent study in this journal, “Anthropomorphic Tendencies in Autism” ( et al in press), included no autistic people as participants. Rather, the authors surveyed an online sample from the general population using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ10), a 10-item self-report measure of autistic traits that may not be psychometrically sound in the general population ( et al 2020). The nature of the sample was not clear from the title or the abstract, which states the study “re-examined the relationship between autism and anthropomorphism in a large sample of adults.” Clarity about participants is important, because studies about autistic traits and studies about autism are not the same…