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A Twin Study of Inattentive, Aggressive, and Anxious/Depressed Behaviors

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ABSTRACT

Objective

To estimate genetic, environmental, and rater contrast influences on parental report of Attention Problems (AP), Aggressive (Agg), and Anxious/Depressed (AxD) behaviors of 492 twin pairs assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist.

Method

A parent (92% mothers) of twins aged 8 to 12 years completed the Child Behavior Checklist. Genetic, shared and unique environmental, and rater bias effects were estimated for the AP, Agg, and AxD syndromes. Data on boys and girls were analyzed separately. Results were compared to prior research on related DSM disorders.

Results

Estimates of genetic influences on AP (60%-68%), Agg (70%-77%), and AxD (61%-65%) were high for both sexes, but lower for AP than prior findings using DSM attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, unlike equivalent analyses of DSM ADHD based on parental report, there was no evidence of rater bias.

Conclusions

Estimates of genetic influence on these common child psychopathological domains were high. There was no evidence of rater contrast effects. These findings have implications for diagnosis, particularly when assessing families with multiple children.

Section snippets

The Current Research

Responses to CBCL questionnaires on a population-based sample of twins would yield useful data for determining the impact of rc effects on heritability estimates. By attempting to account for rater bias, such an analysis might also demonstrate how the CBCL differs from the DSM for genetic research and, by extension, for clinical use. In this study we computed heritability estimates on parental report for a large group of twins aged 8 to 12 years. We tested models both including and excluding an

Subjects and Procedure

The current research is part of an ongoing project, the Missouri Twin Study. Parents of all twin pairs born in Missouri between 1975 and 1991 are being contacted and invited to participate. Respondents are paid $5 for filling out survey materials, which they complete on their own and then return. In this study we restricted our analyses to reports on same-sex twin pairs, aged 8 to 12 years, for whom both CBCLs had been returned and were filled out completely. Therefore, the current sample is

RESULTS

Because distributions of general population standardized CBCL syndrome scores are skewed, we analyzed raw data for the AP, Agg, and AxD syndromes. We transformed nonnormal distributions to correct skewness and kurtosis. In Table 1, variances are listed on the diagonal of each syndrome within zygosity grouping. Correlations (upper triangle elements, in boldface type) and covariances (lower triangle) between the twins for each syndrome are also reported. As expected, the correlations are stronger

DISCUSSION

In this study we analyzed parental report on the CBCL for same-sex twin pairs aged 8 to 12 years. We fit a series of statistical models to estimate the relative influence of genetic and environmental effects on variability in the AP, Agg, and AxD syndromes. We also included a term to estimate rc-that is, the degree to which systematic biases in parental report might be influencing the statistical models.

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    This work was supported by NIMH grant MH52813.

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