Zygosity diagnosis in young twins by parental report

Rietveld, M.J.H.; Valk, J.; Bongers, IL; Stroet, T.M.; Slagboom, P.E.; Boomsma, Dorret I.

doi:10.1375/twin.3.3.134

Cited by 179 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…For all other same-sex twin pairs, zygosity was determined by discriminant analysis, using questionnaire items at each age separately. Agreement between zygosity assignment by the replies to the questions and zygosity assignment by DNA markers/blood typing is around 93% (for details, see Rietveld et al, 2000).…”

Section: Subjects and Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Twins and the study of rater (dis)agreement.

Bartels¹,

Boomsma²,

Hudziak³

et al. 2007

Psychological Methods

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Genetically informative data can be used to address fundamental questions concerning the measurement of behavior in children. The authors illustrate this with longitudinal multiplerater data on internalizing problems in twins. Valid information on the behavior of a child is obtained for behavior that multiple raters agree upon and for rater-specific perception of the child's behavior. Rater-disagreement variance 2 (rd) accounted for 35% of the individual differences in internalizing behavior. Up to 17% of this 2 (rd) was accounted for by rater-specific additive genetic variance 2 (A u ). Thus, the disagreement should not be considered only to be bias/error but also as representing the unique feature of the relationships between that parent and the child. The longitudinal extension of this model helps to make a distinction between measurement error and the raters' unique perception of the child's behavior. For internalizing behavior, the results show large stability across time, which is accounted for by common additive genetic and common shared environmental factors. Rater-specific shared environmental factors show substantial influence on stability. This could mean that rater bias may be persistent and affect longitudinal studies. Genetically informative designs can be used to estimate the size of genetic and environmental effects on variation in behavior and other complex traits. It is less well known that these designs also have the potential to shed a unique light on fundamental measurement problems and could be an important addition to the traditional methodological arsenal for studying psychological data. This is illustrated in this article by studying sources of rater (dis)agreement in longitudinal data on internalizing problems in monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins rated at ages 3, 7, 10, and 12 years by their parents. Rater (Dis)agreementSelf-and observer ratings of behavior are important sources of information in psychology and psychiatry. It is

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Section: Subjects and Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Twins and the study of rater (dis)agreement.

Bartels¹,

Boomsma²,

Hudziak³

et al. 2007

Psychological Methods

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show abstract

“…Data for an additional sibling were available for approximately half of the families (206 siblings, of which 96 were male, 110 were female). Zygosity of the same sex twin pairs was determined using DNA analysis (178 pairs), blood group polymorphisms (48 pairs), or longitudinally collected questionnaire items (Rietveld et al, 2000;93 pairs). In a subset of this sample (197 families), AQ data were collected.…”

Section: Participants and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic and Environmental Covariation Between Autistic Traits and Behavioral Problems

Hoekstra¹,

Bartels

Hudziak

et al. 2007

Twin Res Hum Genet

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Our objective was to examine the overlap between autistic traits and other behavioral problems in a general population sample, and explore the extent to which this overlap is due to genetic or environmental factors. Youth Self Report (YSR) data were collected in a general population sample of 424 twin pairs at 18 years of age, and their nontwin siblings. In 197 of these twin families, self-report ratings on the Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ) were collected. Stepwise backward regression analyses revealed that of all 8 YSR syndrome scales, the Withdrawn Behavior (WB) and Social Problems (SOC) scale were the most important predictors of AQ scores, and together with sex, explained 23% of the variance in AQ scores. Genetic structural equation modeling showed that the overlap between AQ and WB and SOC was mainly due to genetic effects. About half of the genetic variance in AQ scores was specific to the AQ, with the remaining half shared with genetic variance in WB and SOC. Endorsement of autistic traits in a general population sample is associated with social and withdrawn behavioral problems and these problems partly share a common genetic etiology with autistic traits. However, most of the variance in AQ scores remains unexplained by YSR scores, and half of the genetic variance in AQ is unshared with WB and SOC. These results indicate that autistic traits have specific characteristics that are substantially genetically independent from other common but related behavioral domains such as social problems and withdrawn behavior.

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“…From these twin pairs 3773 (33.1%) were MZ and 7618 (66.9%) were DZ. Information about the zygosity of twins was obtained from questions in questionnaires collected at the age of 3 and/or 5, 7, 10, 12 years (Rietveld et al, 2000) and from Blood/DNA typing (N = 1059). There were 11,357 (49.9%) boys and 11,417 (50.1%) girls.…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%