Gene-environment Interplay in Early Life Cognitive Development

Stumm, Sophie von; Kandaswamy, Radhika; Maxwell, Jessye

doi:10.31234/osf.io/wkeqn

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Adjusting for family SES did not alter the effect size of the observed C influences; thus, the C effects that drive the influence of earlier household chaos on later educational achievement are distinct from family SES (Hart et al, 2007). We can only speculate about the kinds of shared environments that may be involved, for example the parenting that children experience in the family home, the school environment that they experience, and the wider neighbourhood conditions (e.g., Engelhardt, Church, Harden, & Tucker-Drob, 2018;Nieuwenhuis & Hooimeijer, 2016;Pinquart, Special Collection: npj Science of Learning Votruba-Drzal, 2015;von Stumm, Kandaswamy, & Maxwell, 2022), they also include variance that is not shared with SES and that may drive the here observed C influences. Further research using genetically sensitive designs is needed to investigate the underlying mechanisms behind these potential environmental factors and to test whether these might act as malleable causal influences on children's educational success after controlling for genetic and environmental confounding.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The developmental interplay between household chaos and educational achievement from age 9 through 16 years: A genetically informative study

Stumm¹,

Starr²,

Voronin³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Household chaos, which reflects the level of disorganisation and confusion that children experience in their family homes, is thought to precipitate the transmission of family background inequality in education. Here, we present a longitudinal, genetically informative study of the developmental interplay between household chaos and educational achievement, using data from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) that recruited families with twins born between 1994 and 1996 in England and Wales. Up to 7,591 pairs of twins completed the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale (CHAOS), a state-of-the-art measure of household chaos, at the ages 9, 12, and 16 years, and also had their end-of-year school grades recorded. We observed small but consistent bidirectional negative effects between household chaos and educational achievement over time (i.e., cross-lagged paths) after controlling for both constructs’ stability and cross-sectional inter-correlations. Fitting biometric autoregressive cross-lagged twin models, we found that the cross-lagged paths from earlier household chaos onto later educational achievement could be attributed to shared environmental influences that were independent of family socioeconomic status (SES). The cross-lagged paths in the reverse direction, from earlier educational achievement to later household chaos, were entirely due to genetic factors after controlling for family SES. These findings suggest that household chaos contributes to the transmission of family background inequality in education during childhood and adolescence largely because of genetic and environmental confounding, rather than having causal effects.

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