Twin-Singleton Comparisons Across Multiple Domains of Life

Willemsen, Gonneke; Odintsova, Veronika V.; Geus, Eco J. C. de; Boomsma, Dorret I.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-47652-6_4

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 124 publications

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“…This nding also supported by study conducted in Bangladesh and national study [17,18]. This could explain by several literature studies have examined twin versus non-twin differences in early life and concluded that multiple pregnancies increase the risk of congenital problems and mortality [19].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

Early Childhood Mortality and Associated Factors in Ethiopia: Mini Demographic and Health Survey 2019

Damete¹,

Lucha²

2022

Preprint

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Background: Early childhood mortality is a major problem in terms of demographics, health, and development and factors that determine the size and growth rate of a population, as well as its ages and genders, along with its spatial distribution. The aim of this study was to determine factors associated with Early childhood mortality among children aged 0–59 months. Methods: The data for this study was extracted from Ethiopia mini demographic and health survey 2019. The study involved 5414 women with children aged 0–59 months in a weighted sample. The analysis was performed using STATA version 16 software. Using sampling weights for descriptive statistics and complex sample designs for inferential statistics, backward stepwise elimination was manually applied. Finally, statistical significance declared at the level of p-value < 0.05. Result: The prevalence of early childhood mortality in Ethiopia was observed to be 5.8%. In multivariate analysis the household wealth index, children from the poorest-wealth index (AOR = 1.211, 95% CI: 0.716-2.047) had higher odds of early childhood mortality in comparison to children from the richer wealth index. The odds of early childhood mortality were thirteen times higher among children born with twins’ birth as compared to single birth, (AOR = 13.615, 95% CI: 6.399-28.965). The odds of early childhood mortality were lower among children delivered in a health facility as compared to home delivery (AOR = 0.936, 95% CI: 0.893-0.982). The odds of early childhood mortality were lower among tube well sources of drinking water as compared to piped sources of drinking water (AOR = 0.7128, 95% CI: 0.322-1.599). The odds of early childhood mortality were higher among pit latrine-type toilet facilities as compared to flush-type toilet facilities (AOR = 2.056, 95% CI: 1.319-3.207). Conclusion: The prevalence of early childhood mortality in Ethiopia shows high risk and it is significantly associated with household wealth index, type of birth, place of delivery, sources of drinking water, and types of toilet facilities. Increasing the coverage and access to early childhood education, governmental and non-governmental organizations and all concerned stakeholders should be prioritized as the major determinants of early childhood mortality.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

Early Childhood Mortality and Associated Factors in Ethiopia: Mini Demographic and Health Survey 2019

Damete¹,

Lucha²

2022

Preprint

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“…Regarding the representativeness of twins compared to the population, most of the differences found between twins and singletons are found in young children, but these differences usually disappear in adulthood. Concerning cognitive abilities specifically, no difference is found between twins and their singleton siblings (Evans and Martin, 2000;Willemsen et al 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Self-control and grit predict school performance: strongly genetic, weakly causal

Kevenaar¹,

Bergen²,

Oldehinkel³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Background: The non-cognitive skills self-control and grit have often been cited as predictors of school performance, but little research has investigated whether this relationship is causal. We investigated the causal nature of this association in a classical twin design, with mono- and dizygotic twin pairs. Specifically, we evaluated the direct impact of self-control and grit on school performance, while controlling for genetic or environmental influences common to all three traits (i.e., confounding). Methods: Teachers of 4,891 Dutch 12-year-old twin pairs (of which 3,837 were complete pairs) completed a survey about school performance (school grades), self-control (ASEBA self-control scale), and the perseverance aspect of grit. We regressed school performance on self-control and grit within the twin model to establish the phenotypic, putatively causal, regression relationship. We modelled genetic or environmental confounding (influences common to the three phenotypes) to determine their influence. In all analyses, we corrected for sex, rater effects of the teacher, and parental socioeconomic status. Results: Self-control and grit explained 28.4% of the school-performance variance in the phenotypic regression analysis (assuming no confounding). However, allowing for genetic confounding (due to genetic pleiotropy) revealed that the association was largely attributable to genetic influences that the three traits share. In the presence of genetic pleiotropy, the phenotypic regression of school performance on self-control and grit accounted for only 4.4%. Conclusions: The association between self-control and grit as predictors of school performance is attributable to both genetic pleiotropy, and to a lesser extent, direct effects of self-control and grit on school performance, which are putatively causal.

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“…Nevertheless, the Netherlands Twin Register has extensively compared the participating twins with their singleton siblings using a within-family design on a wide range of traits, including body composition and physical development, personality and psychopathology, behavioral and sociodemographic traits, physiological parameters and physical disease and cognitive function. Results of these efforts show that with the exception of minor differences in body composition, twins do not seem to differ from singletons for all the other aspects (Willemsen et al, 2021). Therefore, the findings from twins seem representative for the general population.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic and environmental contributions to stability and change in social inhibition across the adolescent and adult life span.

Li‐Gao¹,

Boomsma²,

Dolan³

et al. 2022

Developmental Psychology

Self Cite

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Feeling inhibited and socially not at ease is reflected in the trait social inhibition (SI). SI is associated with psychopathology that arises in young adulthood, such as anxiety. We aim for a better insight into the genetic and environmental contributions to SI across the life span, and as such examine their contributions to SI stability and change across adolescent and adult life span. We analyzed cohort-sequential longitudinal data from the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR), spanning a period of 25 years (Men (N, %): 17855, 37.4%; Age (Median, IQR): 19 years, 16–26 years; 7474 complete MZ twins and 8799 complete DZ twins). The data were organized into 7 age groups: <14 (preadolescence), 15–16 (early adolescence), 17–18 (mid adolescence), 19–20 (late adolescence), 21–30 (young adulthood), 31–40 (adulthood), 41+ (middle-age—older adulthood). SI was assessed with the ASEBA-based proxy questionnaire. Phenotypic stability was established across the entire age range. Next, a longitudinal genetic simplex model was fitted to estimate the genetic and environmental contributions to the observed phenotypic stability. Results showed SI correlated well across follow-up of a single decade (.44 ≤ r ≤ .59) and moderately across the 25 years (.23 – .32) from adolescence to middle-age and older. Broad-sense heritability (h2) was between 40 and 48% across the 7 age groups. Additive and nonadditive genetic effects together explained most of the stability of SI across the life span (about 60–90% of the phenotypic correlation between ages), whereas environmental effects played a lesser role (about 10–40%). Concluding, SI, known to increase the risk of internalizing psychopathology, is phenotypically stable across the life span, which is largely attributable to genetic contributions to individual differences in SI.

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Twin-Singleton Comparisons Across Multiple Domains of Life

Cited by 12 publications

References 124 publications

Early Childhood Mortality and Associated Factors in Ethiopia: Mini Demographic and Health Survey 2019

Early Childhood Mortality and Associated Factors in Ethiopia: Mini Demographic and Health Survey 2019

Self-control and grit predict school performance: strongly genetic, weakly causal

Genetic and environmental contributions to stability and change in social inhibition across the adolescent and adult life span.

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