Infant zygosity can be assigned by parental report questionnaire data

Price, Thomas S.; Freeman, Bernard; Craig, Ian W.; Petrill, Stephen A.; Ebersole, L E; Plomin, Robert

doi:10.1375/136905200320565391

Cited by 322 publications

(299 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Zygosity was determined by the Goldsmith Child Zygosity Questionnaire, which corresponds to DNA marker/blood type determinations of zygosity in 94.8% of cases 34 . The questionnaire was administered during a phone interview with the twins‘ biological mother or father.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infant viewing of social scenes is under genetic control and is atypical in autism

Constantino

Kennon-McGill

Weichselbaum

et al. 2017

Nature

237

254

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Long before infants reach, crawl, or walk, they explore the world by looking: they look to learn and to engage1, giving preferential attention to social stimuli including faces2, face-like stimuli3, and biological motion4. This capacity—social visual engagement—shapes typical infant development from birth5 and is pathognomonically impaired in children affected by autism6. Here we show that variation in viewing of social scenes—including levels of preferential attention and the timing, direction, and targeting of individual eye movements—is strongly influenced by genetic factors, with effects directly traceable to the active seeking of social information7. In a series of eye-tracking experiments conducted with 338 toddlers—including 166 epidemiologically-ascertained twins, 88 non-twins with autism, and 84 singleton controls—we find high monozygotic twin-twin concordance (0.91) and relatively low dizygotic concordance (0.35). Moreover, the measures that are most highly heritable, preferential attention to eye and mouth regions of the face, are also those that are differentially diminished in children with autism (Χ2=64.03, P<0.0001). These results—which implicate social visual engagement as a neurodevelopmental endophenotype—not only for autism, but for population-wide variation in social-information-seeking8—reveal a means of human biological niche construction, with phenotypic differences emerging from the interaction of individual genotypes with early life experience7.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infant viewing of social scenes is under genetic control and is atypical in autism

Constantino

Kennon-McGill

Weichselbaum

et al. 2017

Nature

237

254

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“…SupplementaryDNAis currently being obtained for use in molecular genetic studies (DNA: n > 4000 twin pairs; Trouton, Spinath, & Plomin, 2002). Analyses utilising participants DNA indicate that the parent-rated instrument has a 97% accuracy level (Price et al, 2000). Overall, zygosity was estimated for 99.8% of the sample.…”

Section: Methods Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This resulted in unambiguously identifying 95% of the twin pairs as monozygotic or dizygotic. For the remaining 5%, DNA was collected from cheek swabs, and zygosity was assigned using a multiplex system, which has an accuracy of more than 99% (Price, Freeman, Craig, Petrill, Ebersole, Plomin, 2000). SupplementaryDNAis currently being obtained for use in molecular genetic studies (DNA: n > 4000 twin pairs; Trouton, Spinath, & Plomin, 2002).…”

Section: Methods Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Association Between Anxiety and Conduct Problems in a Large Sample of Twins Aged 2–4

Gregory

Eley

Plomin

2004

J Abnorm Child Psychol

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Anxiety and conduct problems covary, yet studies have not explored the genetic and environmental origins of this association.We analyzed parent-reported anxiety and conduct problems in 6,783 pairs of twins at 2-, 3-, and 4-years of age. As anxiety and conduct problems were fairly stable across the three ages (average 1-year correlation was .53), ratings from all three were combined. The aggregate anxiety and conduct ratings correlated .33 for boys and .30 for girls. Bivariate genetic analyses indicated fairly low genetic correlations (.31 for boys, .16 for girls), and high shared environmental correlations (1.0 for boys and 0.99 for girls) between anxiety and conduct problems. Most of the phenotypic correlation was accounted for by shared environmental mediation (65% for boys and 94% for girls), indicating that many of the same family environmental factors are responsible for the development of both anxiety and conduct problems.Keywords: anxiety; conduct; twins; genes; environment.Goldsmiths Research Online. A twin study of anxiety and conflict. 2Anxiety and conduct problems are common areas of difficulty in child psychopathology (Anderson, Williams, McGee, & Silva, 1987). Although each may appear alone these problems also co-occur in both epidemiological and clinic-referred samples (Fergusson & Horwood, 1993;Russo & Beidel, 1994). This is interesting because at first glance the symptoms of anxiety appear to be counter indicative of conduct problems, and the presumed causes of anxiety and conduct problems would seem to imply a negative association. Although estimates as to the degree of overlap between anxiety and externalizing problems vary between studies, a reviewof the literature has reported that between 2 and 21% of children referred for anxiety had externalizing problems (Russo & Beidel, 1994). Some of the studies leading to these estimates combine child and adolescent data, and co-occurrence between anxiety and externalizing problems may be greater in preadolescent as compared to adolescent samples. For example, in a study of children diagnosed with overanxious disorder, 61% of those aged 5-11 were also diagnosed with an externalizing disorder, but only 15% of those aged 12-19 received such a diagnosis (Strauss, Lease, Last, & Francis, 1988).Over the past decade there has been interest in using genetic data to examine the origins of associations between traits (for a textbook on behavioral genetics see Plomin, DeFries, McClearn, & McGuffin, 2001). Such data can be used to estimate the extent to which associations are mediated by genes, shared environment (any environmental influence contributing to the resemblance of family members) and nonshared environment (environmental factors not contributing to the resemblance of family members). An example of genetic mediation of the association between anxiety and conduct could be via the serotonin system-which has been associated with both anxiety and conduct problems (Eley, Collier,&McGuffin, 2002;Unis et al., 1997), although as discussed later most gen...

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“…The final sample comprised 5356 twin pairs at the age of 8 years and 5983 twin pairs at the age of 12 years. Zygosity was determined by DNA testing and parental report (Goldsmith, 1991), which has been shown to be 95 % as accurate as DNA testing (Price et al 2000). Sample frequencies by zygosity are presented in Table 1.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental associations between traits of autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a genetically informative, longitudinal twin study

et al. 2012

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Developmental associations between traits of autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a genetically informative, longitudinal twin study. Psychological Medicine, Available on CJO doi:10.1017/S003329171200253X Background. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and associated subclinical traits, regularly co-occur with one another. However, the aetiology of their co-occurrence remains poorly understood. This paper provides the first genetically informative, longitudinal analysis of the interaction between traits of ASD and ADHD, and explores their genetic and environmental overlap.Method. Parents of approximately 5000 twin pairs completed questionnaires assessing traits of ASD and ADHD when twins were aged 8 and 12 years. Cross-lagged longitudinal modelling explored their developmental association, enabling a consideration of phenotypic-driven processes. Overlapping aetiological influences on traits at age 12 years were explored using bivariate twin modelling.Results. Traits of ADHD at age 8 years were more strongly predictive of traits of ASD at 12 years than traits of ASD at 8 years were of traits of ADHD at 12 years. Analysis of traits by subscales assessing specific symptom domains suggested that communication difficulties were most strongly associated with traits of ADHD. Bivariate modelling suggested moderate genetic overlap on traits in males (genetic correlation=0.41), and a modest degree of overlap in females (genetic correlation=0.23) at age 12 years.Conclusions. Traits of ADHD at age 8 years significantly influence traits of ASD at age 12 years, after controlling for their initial relationship at age 8 years. In particular, early ADHD traits influenced later communication difficulties. These findings demonstrate the dynamic nature of co-occurring traits across development. In addition, these findings add to a growing body of literature suggesting that traits of ASD and ADHD may arise via similar aetiological processes.

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Infant zygosity can be assigned by parental report questionnaire data

Cited by 322 publications

References 19 publications

Infant viewing of social scenes is under genetic control and is atypical in autism

Infant viewing of social scenes is under genetic control and is atypical in autism

Exploring the Association Between Anxiety and Conduct Problems in a Large Sample of Twins Aged 2–4

Developmental associations between traits of autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a genetically informative, longitudinal twin study

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