No evidence for an opposite pattern of cognitive performance in autistic individuals with and without alexithymia: A response to Rødgaard et al. (2019).

Rødgaard and colleagues (2019) confirmed our finding of a negative relationship between performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test and alexithymia, regardless of autism diagnosis. In their analysis of our cognitive Theory of Mind data, however, they did not control for autistic traits, which covary with alexithymia. Here we demonstrate that when autistic traits are controlled for, there is no significant association between alexithymia and cognitive theory of mind performance in participants with autism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).