Letter to the Editor: ‘Key links between autistic characteristics and anxiety symptoms in autistic children and youth’: a response to Lai et al. (2026)
This Response addresses methodological and conceptual issues raised in a Letter to the Editor concerning our recently published network analysis of autism characteristics and anxiety symptoms in autistic children and youth. We clarify concerns related to potential conceptual overlap between autistic characteristics and anxiety-related symptoms and address questions concerning the multinational nature of the dataset. We also summarize sensitivity and stability analyses showing that the identified bridge nodes are robust to variation in regularization parameters and operational definitions. Together, these clarifications support the interpretation of the reported network findings.
Authors
- Alana J. McVey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7651-8541)
- Matthew J. Hollocks (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9513-6917)
- Rachael Bedford (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8581-055X)
- I. Smith
- Anat Zaidman‐Zait (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2336-5147)
- Iliana Magiati (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7261-7366)
- Connor M. Kerns (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0832-8329)
- Mikle South (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0152-1257)
- Jacqui Rodgers (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1759-316X)
- Tracy Vaillancourt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9058-7276)
- Teresa Bennett
- Emily Simonoff
- Stelios Georgiades
- Antonio Hardan
- Lonnie Zwaigenbaum
- Peter Szatmari
- Mirko Uljarević
- Annie Richard
- Robin Libove
- Amy Van Hecke
- Eric Duku
Institutions
- Marquette University (US)
- Dalhousie University (CA)
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Emory University (US)
- University of Ottawa (CA)
- University of Alberta (CA)
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- The University of Melbourne (AU)
- Queen Mary University of London (GB)
- The Kids Research Institute Australia (AU)
- The University of Western Australia (AU)
- King's College London (GB)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Hospital for Sick Children (CA)
- SickKids Foundation (CA)
- Center for Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine (US)
- Australian Psychological Society (AU)
- Newcastle University (GB)
- Ottawa University (US)
- Stanford University (US)
- McMaster University (CA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Child and Adolescent Mental Health
- Published
- 2026-06-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.70098
- Primary Topic
- Mental Health Research Topics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00