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The Association Between Conduct Problems and Maltreatment: Testing Genetic and Environmental Mediation

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Abstract

It is often assumed that childhood maltreatment causes conduct problems via an environmentally mediated process. However, the association may be due alternatively to either a nonpassive gene-environment correlation, in which parents react to children’s genetically-influenced conduct problems by maltreating them, or a passive gene-environment correlation, in which parents’ tendency to engage in maltreatment and children’s conduct problems are both influenced by a hereditary vulnerability to antisocial behavior (i.e. genetic mediation). The present study estimated the contribution of these processes to the association between maltreatment and conduct problems. Bivariate behavior genetic analyses were conducted on approximately 1,650 twin and sibling pairs drawn from a large longitudinal study of adolescent health (Add Health). The correlation between maltreatment and conduct problems was small; much of the association between maltreatment and conduct problems was due to a nonpassive gene-environment correlation. Results were more consistent with the hypothesis that parents respond to children’s genetically-influenced conduct problems by maltreating them than the hypothesis that maltreatment causes conduct problems.

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Acknowledgments

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 (addhealth@unc.edu). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. This research is also supported by NIH grants DA13956, HD07289, and MH15442. We thank Donna Miles for providing information regarding the conduct problems measure used in Miles, van den Bree, and Pickens (2002).

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Correspondence to R. Jay Schulz-Heik.

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Schulz-Heik, R.J., Rhee, S.H., Silvern, L.E. et al. The Association Between Conduct Problems and Maltreatment: Testing Genetic and Environmental Mediation. Behav Genet 40, 338–348 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-009-9324-6

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