Are there meaningful etiological differences within antisocial behavior? Results of a meta-analysis
Section snippets
Search strategy
To identify relevant twin and adoption studies (i.e., journal articles, published abstracts, and dissertations), the PsycINFO and Medline databases were examined in June and July 2007. The search terms combined each of the following phenotype terms (i.e., delinquency, delinquent, conduct, antisocial, aggression, aggressive, behavior problems) with each of the following genetically-informative study terms (i.e., twin, twins, adoptee, adoptees, adoptive, genetic, environment). The reference
Stem and leaf plots
Stem and leaf plots of AGG and RB are presented in Table 3. These plots allow for an informal estimation of etiological influences. If the median correlation is twice as large for MZ twins as for DZ twins, and the correlations for genetically-unrelated siblings are not greater than zero, a2 is likely to be the primary contributor. If the median correlation is less than twice as large for MZ twins as for DZ twins, and the median correlation for genetically-unrelated siblings is greater than
Discussion
The primary goal of the current meta-analysis was to clarify etiological distinctions between physically aggressive and non-aggressive, rule-breaking antisocial behaviors. Just over a hundred (n = 103) twin and adoption studies were collected, of which 15 RB samples and 19 AGG samples were ultimately included in the analyses. The unconstrained ACE model provided the best fit to the data, indicating that genetic and environmental influences vary significantly in magnitude across AGG and RB. In
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