Variation in the "FMR1" gene may affect aspects of cognition, such as executive function and memory. Environmental factors, such as stress, may also negatively impact cognitive functioning. Participants included 1,053 mothers of children with and without developmental disabilities. Participants completed self-report measures of executive…

Genotype-by-environment interaction (GxE) studies probe heterogeneity in response to risk factors or interventions. Popular methods for estimation of GxE examine multiplicative interactions between individual genetic and environmental measures. However, risk factors and interventions may modulate the total variance of an epidemiological outcome…

This study examined gene-environment correlation (rGE) in intellectual and academic development in 561 U.S.-based adoptees (57% male; 56% non-Latinx White, 19% multiracial, 13% Black or African American, 11% Latinx) and their birth and adoptive parents between 2003 and 2017. Birth mother intellectual and academic performance predicted adoptive…

We examined the relation between home literacy environment (HLE), parents' reading skills, and children's emergent literacy skills (pinyin letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and vocabulary) and reading (word reading and reading comprehension) in a sample of 168 Chinese children (M[subscript age] = 74.26 months) followed from kindergarten to…

Parent-child similarity is a function of genetic and environmental transmission. In addition, genetic effects not transmitted to offspring may drive parental behavior, thereby affecting the rearing environment of the child. Measuring genetic proclivity directly, through polygenic risk scores (PRSs), provides a way to test for the effect of…

Purpose: Young people with developmental language disorder (DLD) have poorer mental health than those without DLD. However, not all young people with DLD are equally affected; some have more mental health difficulties than others. What explains these differences remains unclear. Method: Data from a community cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal…

The goal of the present study was to replicate Burt et al. (2009) and Hou et al. (2013) findings by determining the contribution of peers' deviance to changes in participants' (monozygotic [MZ] twins') self-reported delinquency from mid- to late adolescence while controlling for possible gene-environment correlations (rGE) through the use of the…

Results from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) can be used to generate a polygenic score (PGS), an individual-level measure summarizing identified genetic influence on a trait dispersed across the genome. For complex, behavioral traits, the association between an individual's PGS and their phenotype may contain bias (from geographic,…

Observed genetic associations with educational attainment may be due to direct or indirect genetic influences. Recent work highlights "genetic nurture," the potential effect of parents' genetics on their child's educational outcomes via rearing environments. To date, few mediating childhood environments have been tested. We used a large…

The non-cognitive skills self-control and grit are often considered predictors of school performance, but whether this relationship is causal remains unclear. We investigated the causality of this association using a twin design. Specifically, we evaluated the direct impact of self-control and grit on school performance, while controlling for…

Autism spectrum disorder is associated with sensory processing alterations, such as sensory hyper- and hypo-responsiveness. Twin studies are scarce in this field, but they are necessary in order to disentangle the genetic and environmental contributions to this association. Furthermore, it is unclear how different neurodevelopmental/psychiatric…

Sleep is important for child development. Sleep problems in early childhood are associated with negative outcomes across numerous domains, including executive control, internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, and social competence (Astill et al., 2012; Hysing et al., 2016; Spruyt et al., 2019). Little research has focused on moderators…

Decades of research suggest that learning styles, or the belief that people learn better when they receive instruction in their dominant way of learning, may be one of the most pervasive myths about cognition. Nonetheless, little is known about what it means to believe in learning styles. The present investigation uses one theoretical…

Behavioral and molecular genetic research has established that child cognitive ability and academic performance are substantially heritable, but genetic variation does not account for all of the stratification of cognitive and academic outcomes across families. Which specific contexts and experiences contribute to these "shared…

This investigation examines the spread of problem behaviors (substance use and delinquency) between twin siblings. A sample of 628 twins (151 male twin pairs and 163 female twin pairs) drawn from the Quebec Newborn Twin Study completed inventories describing delinquency and substance use at ages 13, 14, and 15. A 3-wave longitudinal actor-partner…