Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41706307›Full record

ArticleJournal of autism and developmental disorders2026

Accuracy of Autism-Related TikTok Information in Italian: A Comparison Between Human Raters and Large Language Models.

Alessandro Carollo, Seraphina Fong, Giovanni Belardinelli, Silvia Perzolli, Giacomo Vivanti, Daniel S Messinger, Dagmara Dimitriou, Gianluca Esposito

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Article in Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

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2 · The registry

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors.

Alessandro Carollo *Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, 38068, Rovereto, Italy.
Seraphina Fong *Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, 38068, Rovereto, Italy.
Giovanni BelardinelliDepartment of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, 38068, Rovereto, Italy.
Silvia PerzolliDepartment of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, 38068, Rovereto, Italy.
Giacomo VivantiA.J. Drexel Autism Institute, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
Daniel S MessingerDepartment of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, 33124, USA.
Dagmara DimitriouSleep Education and Research Laboratory, Department of Psychology and Human Development, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, WC1H 0AA, UK.
Gianluca EspositoDepartment of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, 38068, Rovereto, Italy. gianluca.esposito@unitn.it.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9442-0254

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

purposeSocial networking sites are major channels for sharing information on neurodiversity, including autism spectrum disorder. TikTok has become a particularly influential platform for autism-related communication, yet concerns remain about the scientific accuracy of such content. Most prior studies have focused on English-language videos and have evaluated accuracy with limited granularity. Additionally, the difficulty of achieving consistent expert ratings underscores the need for automated reliability assessment.

methodsIn this study, we examined 408 informational statements extracted from 148 TikTok videos posted under the hashtag #Autismo (Italian for #Autism). Three clinical experts independently classified each statement as inaccurate, overgeneralized, or accurate; their median ratings served as the human-derived ground truth and were compared with classifications from two large language models: ChatGPT 4.0 mini and Gemini 1.5 Flash.

resultsHuman raters showed moderate agreement (κmean = 0.52) and high specific agreement only for accurate statements, with lower agreement for overgeneralized and inaccurate content. ChatGPT achieved moderate agreement with human ratings (κ = 0.58), while Gemini reached only fair agreement (κ = 0.29). ChatGPT also exhibited a more conservative evaluation pattern (accurate information: precision = 0.89, recall = 0.82), whereas Gemini tended to overestimate accuracy (accurate information: precision = 0.76, recall = 0.93).

conclusionThese findings suggest that LLMs, particularly ChatGPT, may support cautious and assistive evaluation of online health content. Future research should assess their applicability across online communities and platforms and explore their integration into accuracy-based alert systems that provide users with contextual reliability cues.

Indexed as

Autism spectrum disorderClinical information accuracyLarge language modelsSocial networking sitesTikTok

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.