Letter to the Editor: Beyond bridge nodes: conceptual and methodological considerations for autism-anxiety network models: A response to Sahin (2026)

This Response addresses a Letter to the Editor by Sahin (Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 2026) concerning our network analysis of autism characteristics and anxiety symptoms in autistic children and youth (Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 2025, 30, 327). In his Letter, Sahin proposes three extensions for future research: examining whether Theory of Mind mediates the association between social communication and anxiety, modeling intolerance of uncertainty and arousal dysregulation as potential bridge mechanisms, and estimating comparable network models using autistic youths' self-report data. In this Response, I argue that although each extension warrants further examination, it also raises conceptual and methodological issues that require closer consideration. Moreover, I emphasize that examining potentially modifiable mechanisms underlying autism-anxiety co-occurrence will require future research to move beyond descriptions of cross-sectional network topology and adopt study designs and network models better suited to examining temporal and mechanistic processes.