The Witness-Aimed First Account (WAFA): A new technique for interviewing autistic witnesses and victims.

The interviews were about short simulated crime videos, not real crimes, real witnesses or victims, or clinical interviews. The delay was only around 30 minutes, which is shorter than most real investigative or clinical interviews. Narrative coherence was not assessed, so the study does not show that WAFA makes accounts more coherent or credible. Participants were matched on vocabulary, matrix reasoning and working memory, so results may not apply to autistic people with intellectual disability. WAFA was delivered as a package of self-segmentation, post-it notes, topic-by-topic recall and follow-up questions; the study cannot separate the contribution of each component. One non-autistic outlier was excluded, and ethnicity, socioeconomic status and education were not recorded. The interviewers were trained research assistants in a laboratory, not police or clinicians.

The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Funding was a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant to Dr Katie Maras and Dr Sebastian Gaigg, and an Economic and Social Research Council Future Research Leaders award to Dr Katie Maras.

Do not conclude that WAFA improves real-world testimony, clinical interviewing, or therapy outcomes. It was tested only with short mock crime videos and a 30-minute delay, and it did not assess narrative coherence, credibility, or clinical function.