Genetic and environmental links between motor activity level and attention problems in early childhood

Abstract

Cross-lagged biometric models were used to examine genetic and environmental links between actigraph-assessed motor activity level (AL) and parent-rated attention problems (AP) in 314 same-sex twin pairs (MZ = 145, DZ = 169) at ages 2 and 3 years. At both ages, genetic correlations between AL and AP were moderate (r = .35; r = .39) indicating both overlap and specificity in genetic effects across the two domains. Within- and across-age phenotypic associations between AL and AP were entirely due to overlapping genetic influences. There was a unidirectional effect of AL at age 2 predicting later AP. For AP, genetic and environmental influences from age 2 were transmitted to age 3 via stability effects and from AL. For AL, across-age effects were transmitted only via stability. These results suggest that overactivity in late infancy may impact the later development of problems related to inattention, and that genetic factors explain the association between the two domains.

Heritability of Psychological Traits and Developmental Milestones in Infancy

“…We identified 5047 publications (4675 publications in databases and 372 publications in references). After duplicate removal and screening, 139 publications were included, containing data on 79 044 twin pairs (31 053 MZ and 47 991 DZ twins), 52 twin cohorts, 21 countries, and 6 continents between 1972 and 2020. The sample included 66 407 twin pairs from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries (in Europe, North America, and Oceania; 84.01%) and 12 637 twin pairs from Africa, Asia, and South America (15.99%) (eResults, eFigures 2 and 3, and eTable 4 in the Supplement).…”

“…Quality assessment results are displayed in eFigure 19 in the Supplement. The mean (SD) score for the 106 publications included in the meta-analysis was 75.58% (13.83%).…”

The empathic personality profile: Using personality characteristics to reveal genetic, environmental, and developmental patterns of adolescents' empathy

“…Using the Mx structural equation modeling software (Neale et al, 2004), genetic and environmental influences on empathy, empathic personality profiles, and the associations between these constructs within and across ages, were investigated with a biometric cross‐lagged model (Saudino et al, 2018)—one for each empathy construct (emotional and cognitive). This model assumes that the genetic and environmental associations between the phenotypes are proportional to the phenotypic association and is therefore more parsimonious than other models (Turkheimer, 2016; Turkheimer et al, 2014).…”

“…The overall fit of the model was assessed by calculating twice the difference between the negative log‐likelihood (−2LL) of the model and that of a saturated model (i.e., a model in which all variances and covariances for MZ and DZ twins are estimated). The difference in −2LL is asymptotically distributed as χ 2 , with degrees of freedom equal to the difference in the number of parameters in the full and the saturated model (Saudino et al, 2018). A reduced model, in which paths that were estimated at almost zero were dropped, was compared to the full model, in which all parameters were estimated.…”

The Boston University Twin Project (BUTP) II

“…The sample and methods were described in Saudino and Asherson (2013). Our use of multiple measures of activity level (actigraphs, parent ratings and observer ratings) in this early BUTP study has provided unique evidence of situation-specific (Saudino & Zapfe, 2008), measurespecific (Saudino, 2009) and age-specific (Saudino, 2012) genetic influences on activity level; and genetic links between activity level and hyperactivity , attention problems (Saudino et al, 2018) and shyness (Frazier-Wood & Saudino, 2017). We have also explored genetic and environmental contributions to a number of novel phenotypes in early childhood including elicited imitation (Fenstermacher & Saudino, 2007), inhibitory control (Gagne & Saudino, 2016), callous/unemotional behaviors (Flom & Saudino, 2017), autisticlike traits (Edelson & Saudino, 2009) and positive affect (Flom et al, 2018).…”