Intergenerational Transmission of Cannabis Use: Testing Genetic Risk and the Mitigating Influences of Parent Positive Behavior Support in Early Childhood.

As the prevalence of Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD) in late adolescence increases, understanding the etiology of CUD is paramount. Consistent with resilience frameworks, the current study examined whether parent cannabis use and genetic risk predicted offspring cannabis use and CUD symptoms in late adolescence. Parental positive behavior support in early childhood was considered as a possible buffer of intergenerational transmission and genetic risk for CUD.

Does a heritable common latent factor explain body mass index, percent body fat, and waist circumference across childhood?

Background/objectives: Empirical data consistently suggest high heritability estimates for adiposity, with heritability peaking during childhood. However, no study has considered the potentially shared genetic and environmental etiologies of the three most commonly used adiposity metrics - body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, and percent body fat. We examined the genetic and environmental contributions to BMI, percent body fat, and waist circumference, and the extent to which their genetic and environmental variances overlap during middle childhood.

Development of temperament types from infancy to adolescence: Genetic and environmental influences with an economically and racially/ethnically diverse sample.

Kagan theorized biologically based temperament types that are present in infancy, stable across development, and essential for understanding individual differences. Despite evidence, temperament research remains focused on a few prominent dimensions of temperament, without adequately addressing covariance among dimensions and temperament types. Using longitudinal twin data, we took a person-centered statistical approach to identify temperament types and examined continuity and change across five developmental periods ( = 602; = 522; = 390; = 718; Nearly adolescence = 700).

Concordance in parent-child and sibling actigraphy-measured sleep: Evidence among early adolescent twins and primary caregivers.

Study Objectives: Growing evidence suggests concordance between parent and youth sleep. However, no known study has simultaneously examined concordance among siblings' sleep patterns. This study investigated daily and average concordance in (1) parent-youth and (2) sibling actigraphy-measured sleep, as well as the degree to which sibling concordance varied by sleeping arrangements.

Genetic and environmental links between executive functioning and effortful control in middle childhood.

There is a need to understand the components of self-regulation, given its link to nearly every domain of functioning across the life span. This study examined the etiological underpinnings of covariance between measures of executive functioning (EF) and effortful control (EC) in middle childhood. The extent that genetic and environmental factors explain the association between EF and EC is unknown.

The onset of pubertal development and actigraphy-assessed sleep during middle childhood: Racial, gender, and genetic effects.

Objective: This study (1) examined pubertal development in relation to actigraphy-assessed sleep in twin children, and tested whether associations differed by child race and gender, (2) modeled genetic and environmental influences on pubertal development and sleep indicators, and (3) examined genetic and environmental influences on the covariation of puberty and sleep.

Design: The classic twin design was used to examine genetic and environmental contributions to puberty and sleep and their associations.

Setting: Data were collected from community-dwelling urban and rural families of twins in the southwestern U.

Educational attainment polygenic score predicts inhibitory control and academic skills in early and middle childhood.

Inhibitory control skills are important for academic outcomes across childhood, but it is unknown whether inhibitory control is implicated in the association between genetic variation and academic performance. This study examined the relationship between a GWAS-based (EduYears) polygenic score indexing educational attainment (EA PGS) and inhibitory control in early (M  = 3.80 years) and middle childhood (M  = 9.

Withdrawn and Acting out?: Early Adolescents' Social Avoidance and Externalizing Problems.

Relative to other motivations of social withdrawal (i.e., shyness, unsociability), social avoidance is understudied.

School Readiness and Achievement in Early Elementary School: Moderation by Students' Temperament.

The goals of this study were to examine the longitudinal relations between school readiness and reading and math achievement and to test if these relations were moderated by temperament. The sample included socio-economically and ethnically diverse twins (=551). Parents reported on school readiness when children were five years old.

Genetic Moderation of the Association Between Early Family Instability and Trajectories of Aggressive Behaviors from Middle Childhood to Adolescence.

The present study tested models of polygenic by environment interaction between early childhood family instability and polygenic risk for aggression predicting developmental trajectories of aggression from middle childhood to adolescence. With a longitudinal sample of 515 racially and ethnically diverse children from low-income families, primary caregivers reported on multiple components of family instability annually from child ages 2-5 years. A conservative polygenic risk score (p = 0.

Genotype-environment correlation by intervention effects underlying middle childhood peer rejection and associations with adolescent marijuana use.

Aggressive behavior in middle childhood can contribute to peer rejection, subsequently increasing risk for substance use in adolescence. However, the quality of peer relationships a child experiences can be associated with his or her genetic predisposition, a genotype-environment correlation (rGE). In addition, recent evidence indicates that psychosocial preventive interventions can buffer genetic predispositions for negative behavior.

Children's sleep, impulsivity, and anger: shared genetic etiology and implications for developmental psychopathology.

Background: Prior research has established links between poor sleep and problems in emotion regulation. Impulsivity and anger/frustration are core features of child psychopathology. Further, sleep problems are commonly associated with psychopathology.

Effortful Control Moderates the Relation Between Electronic-Media Use and Objective Sleep Indicators in Childhood.

Electronic-media use is associated with sleep disruptions in childhood and adolescence, although research relies primarily on subjective sleep. Effortful control, a dimension of self-regulation, may mitigate this association by helping children disengage from and regulate responses to media. We examined associations between media use and multiple actigraph-measured sleep parameters at mean and day levels and tested children's effortful control as a moderator of mean-level relations.

Arizona Twin Project: Specificity in Risk and Resilience for Developmental Psychopathology and Health.

The Arizona Twin Project is an ongoing longitudinal study designed to elucidate gene-environment interplay underlying the development of risk and resilience to common mental and physical health problems during infancy, childhood and adolescence. Specificity of risk is carefully examined across mental and physical health and how these influences vary across socioeconomic and sociocultural environments. Participants are a sample of approximately 700 twins (31% Latinx) recruited from birth records in the state of Arizona, USA.

Toddler risk and protective characteristics: Common and unique genetic and environmental influences.

The goal of this study was to disentangle the common and unique genetic and environmental influences on social-emotional competence, problem behavior, physiological dysregulation, and negative emotionality (NE) in toddlers. The sample consisted of 243 twin pairs (mean age = 31.94 months) rated by primary caregivers (>95% mothers) on the Children's Behavior Questionnaire and the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment.

Gene set enrichment analysis to create polygenic scores: a developmental examination of aggression.

Previous approaches for creating polygenic risk scores (PRSs) do not explicitly consider the biological or developmental relevance of the genetic variants selected for inclusion. We applied gene set enrichment analysis to meta-GWAS data to create developmentally targeted, functionally informed PRSs. Using two developmentally matched meta-GWAS discovery samples, separate PRSs were formed, then examined in time-varying effect models of aggression in a second, longitudinal sample of children (n = 515, 49% female) in early childhood (2-5 years old), and middle childhood (7.

Children's sleep and daytime functioning: Increasing heritability and environmental associations with sibling conflict.

Children's sleep has both environmental and genetic influences, with stressful family environmental factors like household chaos and marital conflict associated with sleep duration and quality (El-Sheikh, Buckhalt, Mize, & Acebo, 2006; Fiese, Winter, Sliwinski, & Anbar, 2007). However, it is less clear whether sibling conflict is related to sleep duration and children's sleep problems (e.g.

Genetic moderation of the effects of the Family Check-Up intervention on children's internalizing symptoms: A longitudinal study with a racially/ethnically diverse sample.

Development involves synergistic interplay among genotypes and the physical and cultural environments, and integrating genetics into experimental designs that manipulate the environment can improve understanding of developmental psychopathology and intervention efficacy. Consistent with differential susceptibility theory, individuals can vary in their sensitivity to environmental conditions including intervention for reasons including their genotype. As a consequence, understanding genetic influences on intervention response is critical.

Early Life Socioeconomic Disparities in Children's Sleep: The Mediating Role of the Current Home Environment.

Despite identified concurrent socioeconomic disparities in children's sleep, little research has examined pathways explaining such associations. This study examined the quality of the home environment as a direct predictor of sleep and potential mediator of associations between early life socioeconomic status and objective and subjective indicators of sleep in middle childhood. A socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of 381 twin children (50% female; 46.

A Twin Factor Mixture Modeling Approach to Childhood Temperament: Differential Heritability.

Twin factor mixture modeling was used to identify temperament profiles while simultaneously estimating a latent factor model for each profile with a sample of 787 twin pairs (M  = 7.4 years, SD = .84; 49% female; 88.

Partial replication of two rumination-related candidate gene studies.

Two recent papers associated candidate genes with brooding rumination, a possible cognitive endophenotype for depression, in children ages 8-14 years. Stone et al. reported that BDNF val66met polymorphism predicted brooding in adolescence.

The Unique and Shared Genetic and Environmental Contributions to Fear, Anger, and Sadness in Childhood.

This study examined the extent to which subordinate dimensions of negative emotionality were genetically and environmentally distinct in a sample of 1,316 twins (51% female, 85.8% Caucasian, primarily middle class, Mage = 7.87 years, SD = .

Arizona Twin Project: a focus on early resilience.

The Arizona Twin Project is an ongoing longitudinal study designed to elucidate the genetic and environmental influences underlying the development of early competence and resilience to common mental and physical health problems during infancy and childhood. Participants are a sample of 600 twins (25% Hispanic) recruited from birth records in the state of Arizona, United States. Primary caregivers were interviewed on twins' development and early social environments when twins were 12 and 30 months of age.