Letter to the Editors of Psychological Science: On the use of the AQ-10 autism screening instrument in studies of ToM

In our recent work examining which sources of cognitive conflict best accounted for age-related difficulty with ToM (Rahman et al., 2021*), we employed the AQ-10 to screen for suspected autism. In line with work subsequent to Allison et al. (2012; Booth et al., 2013) and with original clinical guidance (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2021), we used a cut-off of ≥7. New guidance produced since publication, however, suggests a cut-off of ≥6. While our data collection and analyses occurred before the guidance was revised, in order to reflect best current practice, we re-analysed our data, taking into account this new cut-off**. We found that our core findings and conclusions hold.

*OSF project for Rahman et al., 2021, including pre-registration, materials and data, is available from: https://osf.io/m6rgw

** OSF project for re-analysis, taking into account revised cutoff, is available from: https://osf.io/gr5w3/