Internal reliability, homogeneity, and factor structure of the ten-item Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ-10) with two additional response categories

Bertrams, Alex

doi:10.1017/exp.2020.70

Cited by 14 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…A potential limitation of this study is that we sorted groups based on having a validated diagnosis of autism only. The AQ-10, while helpful as a screening tool and a means of characterising participants, does not have diagnostic validity ( Ashwood et al, 2016 ) and studies have raised questions about the reliability of this measure in capturing characteristics of autism that do not reach clinical significance ( Bertrams & Shah, 2021 ). To exclude or include participants on the basis of AQ-10 scores would have significant limitations as a method.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive processes in autism: Repetitive thinking in autistic versus non-autistic adults

Cooper

Russell

Calley

et al. 2021

Autism

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Repetitive and restricted behaviours are a core feature of autism, and cognition in autistic individuals may also be repetitive and restricted. We aimed to investigate the relationship between repetitive behaviours and repetitive thinking. We predicted that autistic people would experience more repetitive, perseverative, visual and negative cognition than controls. We predicted that repetitive thinking would be associated with repetitive behaviours in the autistic participants. We recruited autistic ( n = 54) and control ( n = 66) participants who completed measures of insistence on sameness and obsessive-compulsive behaviours. Participants then took part in 5 days of descriptive experiencing sampling, recording their thoughts when a random alarm sounded. Consistent with our hypothesis, autistic participants reported more repetitive thinking. Contrary with our other hypotheses, autistic participants reported equivalent frequency of perseveration, visual thoughts and negative thoughts to non-autistic participants. Moreover, participants who reported more obsessive thinking reported more repetitive behaviour (insistence on sameness), but there was no such relationship between repetitive thinking and behaviour. Autistic participants who reported more repeated thoughts in the descriptive experience sampling had significantly lower obsessive thinking scores. We conclude that anxiety focused cognitions may drive insistence on sameness behaviours, and that the relationship between repetitive cognition and behaviour is complex and warrants further investigation. Lay abstract A core feature of autism is the tendency to do the same activity or behaviour repetitively. We wanted to find out if autistic people also experience repetitive thinking, for example, having the same thoughts repeatedly. We thought that there would be a link between repetitive behaviour and repetitive thinking. We asked 54 autistic people and 66 non-autistic people to complete questionnaires measuring repetitive behaviours and obsessive thinking. Next, participants were trained by a researcher to record their thoughts using a structured paper form. They then completed 5 days of thought recording, which they did each time a random alarm sounded on their mobile phone. We found that autistic people had more repetitive thoughts than non-autistic people, but they did not report having more negative or visual thoughts compared with non-autistic people. Autistic people who had more repetitive thoughts during the 5 days of thought recording did not report more repetitive behaviour. However, autistic people who reported more obsessive thinking, for example, more negative and unwanted thoughts, also reported higher levels of repetitive behaviour. We conclude that some repetitive behaviours may be linked to anxiety and that more research is needed to better understand repetitive behaviours in autism.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive processes in autism: Repetitive thinking in autistic versus non-autistic adults

Cooper

Russell

Calley

et al. 2021

Autism

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“…We found the expected negative relationship between mentalizing ability and RAADS-14 scores (linear regression model:  −14 = -0.002, SE = 0.0009, t476 = -2.21, P = 0.03) but not AQ-10 scores (linear regression model:  10 = 0.006, SE = 0.004, t476 = 1.33, P = 0.19). This unexpected finding, together with recent re-evaluations of the reliability of the AQ-10 scale (Bertrams, 2021), and the greater developmental information captured by the RAADS-14, led us to focus on RAADS-14 scores in the remainder of the analyses.…”

Section: Confidence Was Negatively Related To Response Times (Logrt) Trial-by-trial Response Times Have a Higher Impact On The Estimated mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…To test the effect of autistic traits on ( ) we ran the same models specified in Equations 1.1 and 1.2 but now replacing menta with the RAADS-14 main composite autistic trait scores (Eriksson et al, 2013). In preliminary analyses we failed to replicate previous findings of a negative correlation between mentalizing ability and AQ-10 scores (Allison et al, 2012), and therefore (deviating from our pre-registration plan) we decided to conduct all further analysis of questionnaire data using RAADS-14 scores alone (Bertrams, 2021).…”

Section: Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computations of confidence are modulated by mentalizing ability

Plas¹,

Mason²,

La³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Do people have privileged and direct access to their own minds, or do we infer our own thoughts and feelings indirectly, as we would infer the mental states of others? In this study we shed light on this question by examining how mentalizing ability—the set of processes involved in understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings—relates to metacognitive efficiency—the ability to reflect on one’s own performance. In a general population sample (N = 477) we showed that mentalizing ability and self-reported socio-communicative skills are positively correlated with perceptual metacognitive efficiency, even after controlling for choice accuracy. By modelling the trial-by-trial formation of confidence we showed that mentalizing ability predicted the association between response times and confidence, suggesting those with better mentalizing ability were more sensitive to inferential cues to self-performance. In a second study we showed that both mentalizing and metacognitive efficiency were lower in autistic participants (N = 40) when compared with age, gender, IQ, and education-matched non-autistic participants. Together, our results suggest that the ability to understand other people’s minds predicts self-directed metacognition.

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“…Thus, even within the autistic population, the severity of autistic symptoms may be relevant for the degree of test anxiety. However, we do not want to overstate these relationships, as very recent research has revealed some psychometric deficits of the 10-item AQ that we used in this study [27,28].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Test Anxiety in Autistic University Students—Preliminary Results from a German-Speaking Sample

2021

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Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition associated with increased levels of anxiety. However, whether autism is related to heightened test anxiety as one situation-specific type of anxiety has not yet been examined. This question may be relevant for the achievement and well-being of autistic people in educational settings (e.g., at universities). In this study, we took a first step to investigate whether autistic university students have increased test anxiety. A sample of 16 German-speaking university students completed an established diagnostic instrument to measure test anxiety and its components of worry, emotionality, cognitive interference, and lack of confidence. The scores of the autistic students were compared with the test anxiety means and percentile ranks of the standardization sample for the applied test anxiety measure (n = 1350). For an additional comparison, the test anxiety means and percentile ranks of non-autistic university students (n = 101) were assessed during the last third of the semester; that is, close to the examinations. Overall, the results suggest that autistic university students have remarkably increased test anxiety. Although the present findings must be considered preliminary, they suggest that text anxiety in educational settings may be a neglected significant problem for autistic people that requires further attention in research and practice.

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Internal reliability, homogeneity, and factor structure of the ten-item Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ-10) with two additional response categories

Cited by 14 publications

References 16 publications

Cognitive processes in autism: Repetitive thinking in autistic versus non-autistic adults

Cognitive processes in autism: Repetitive thinking in autistic versus non-autistic adults

Computations of confidence are modulated by mentalizing ability

Test Anxiety in Autistic University Students—Preliminary Results from a German-Speaking Sample

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