Developmental-genetic effects on level and change in childhood fears of twins during adolescence.
BACKGROUND
If the adaptive significance of specific fears changes with age, the genetic contribution to individual differences may be lowest at the age of greatest salience. The roles of genes and environment in the developmental-genetic trajectory of five common childhood fears are explored in 1094 like-sex pairs of male and female monozygotic and dizygotic twins assessed on up to three occasions during adolescence (ages 8-18 years).


METHODS
Dichotomous self-ratings of a cluster of five correlated fears from Ollendick's schedule of fears (FSSC-R) were extracted for subjects at each occasion of assessment. The effects of genes and environment on overall level of fears and rates of adolescent decline were explored by fitting an item-response theory ('IRT') model that allowed for individual genetic and environmental differences in initial fear level ('intercept') and rates of adolescent change ('slope') across the repeated waves of measurement. Different forms of the model were explored using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to derive the posterior distribution of subject and item parameters from the raw responses.


RESULTS
Additive genetic differences affect the common factor underlying the five fear-items. The same genes also affect rates of change with age, especially in boys. Male adolescents with higher overall genetic predisposition to childhood fears tended to show slower recovery with age than subjects with relatively low initial values. Thus, the genetic variance apparently increases with age.


CONCLUSIONS
This finding is consistent with a prediction that the regulation of genetic differences will be strongest, and thus the additive genetic variance will be smallest, at the age when the particular stimulus is most salient. Items differed in the extent to which they were sensitive to underlying random differences in the rate of developmental change. Individual differences in rates of change with age were more marked in boys than girls.
Eaves
Lindon J
LJ
Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298-0003, USA. eaves.Lindon@gmail.com
Silberg
Judy L
JL
D000293:Adolescent; D041923:Adolescent Development; D017677:Age Distribution; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics* / Q000523:psychology*; D012650:Self Disclosure; D017678:Sex Distribution; D012931:Social Environment; D014427:Twins / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology*; D014768:Virginia / Q000453:epidemiology