Genetic and environmental influences upon the CBCL/6-18 DSM-oriented scales: similarities and differences across three different computational approaches and two age ranges

Abstract

To cite this version:Chiara A. M. Spatola, Richard Rende, Marco Battaglia. Genetic and environmental influences upon the CBCL/6-18 DSM-oriented scales: similarities and differences across three different computational approaches and two age ranges. European child & adolescent psychiatry, 2010, 19 (8), pp.647-658. <10.1007/s00787-010-0102-z>. <hal-00579796> ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONGenetic and environmental influences upon the CBCL/6-18 DSM-oriented scales: similarities and differences across three different computational approaches and two age ranges Abstract Inasmuch as the newly established DSM-oriented CBCL/6-18 scales are to be increasingly employed to assess clinical/high-risk populations, it becomes important to explore their aetiology both within the normal-and the extreme range of variation in general population samples and to compare the results obtained in different age groups. We investigated by the Quantitative Maximum Likelihood, the De Fries-Fulker, and the Ordinal Maximum Likelihood methods the genetic and environmental influences upon the five DSM-oriented CBCL/6-18 scales in 796 twins aged 8-17 years belonging to the general population-based Italian Twin Registry. When children were analysed together regardless of age, most best-fitting solutions yielded genetic and non-shared environmental factors as the sole influences for DSMoriented CBCL/6-18 behaviours, both for the normal and the extreme variations. When analyses were conducted separately for two age groups, shared environmental influences emerged consistently for Affective and Anxiety Problems in children aged 8-11. Oppositional-Defiant, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity, and Conduct Problems appeared-with few exceptions-influenced only by genetic and non-shared environmental factors in both age groups, according to all three computational approaches. The De Fries-Fulker method appeared to be more sensitive in detecting shared environmental effects. Analysing the same set of data with different analytic approaches leads to better-balanced views on the aetiology of psychopathological behaviours in the developmental years.

Psychopathology in 7‐year‐old children: Differences in maternal and paternal ratings and the genetic epidemiology

“…and CD in 7‐year‐olds only. Our C estimates were smaller than reported by Spatola et al [] in Italian twins aged 8–11 and Chen et al [] in Chinese twins aged 6–18, which can be explained by the fact that we used a smaller age range and multiple informants. Neither did we find a significant effect of C for OCD on the common part like van Grootheest et al [], who also used the common perception shared by both parents, not confounded by rater bias, to estimate a unbiased C of 10% on OCD in 7‐year‐old twins.…”

“…A limited number of studies is available for the DSM‐oriented scales. In one study in 398 Italian twin pairs [Spatola et al, ], the heritability for five DSM scales (i.e., affective, anxiety, attention, oppositional‐defiant and conduct problems) varied between 34% and 74% in twins aged 8–11 and between 53% and 82% in twins aged 12–17. Significant effects of C were found for affective (39%) and anxiety (30%) problems in children aged 8–11.…”

Genetics of aggressive behavior: An overview

“…For parent ratings of conduct problems, the Child Behavior Checklist [CBCL; Achenbach and Rescorla, 2001] is often employed. Scores are taken from the DSM-Oriented Scale (DOS) for conduct problems [Spatola et al, 2010;Bertoletti et al, 2014] or the externalizing scale of the CBCL encompassing the aggression and rule-breaking subscales [Burt and Klump, 2012;Robbers et al, 2012;Nikolas et al, 2013]. Meta-analyses have shown a distinction between aggression and rule-breaking, with the former primarily influenced by genetics and the latter by the shared environment [Burt, 2009[Burt, , 2013.…”

Maternal and paternal influences on the developmental trajectory of childhood anxiety symptoms: a genetically sensitive investigation

“…Prior distributions for the model parameters Spatola, et al (2010) anywhere between a 0 and 0.5 SD shift).…”

“…The primary source of environmental influence on childhood anxiety symptoms during this time comes from parents and siblings (for a review, see Silverman & Field, 2011) because children are more physically and psychologically dependent on parents at this age (Shaw & Shelleby, 2014). Twin studies consistently demonstrate a role for shared environmental influences on child anxiety symptoms in pre-school children (Eley, et al, 2000;Eley, et al, 2003) and 8-17 year olds (e.g., Ogliari, et al, 2010;Spatola, Rende, & Battaglia, 2010;Zavos, Rijsdijk, & Eley, 2012). These studies also show that the non-shared environment is important in shaping anxiety symptoms.…”