title: Disorganization, COMT, and Children's Social Behavior: The Norwegian Hypothesis of Legacy of Disorganized Attachment.
abstract: Why is disorganized attachment associated with punitive-controlling behavior in some, but caregiving-controlling in others? Hygen et al. (2014) proposed that variation in the Catechol-O-methyl transferase(COMT) Val158Met genotype explains this variation, providing preliminary data to this effect. We offer a conceptual replication, analyzing data on 560 children (males: 275) drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. As predicted, competitive model-fitting indicated that disorganized infants carrying Met alleles engage in more positive behavior and less negative behavior than other children at age 5 and 11, with the reverse true of Val/Val homozygotes, seemingly consistent with caregiving-controlling and punitive-controlling styles, respectively, but only in the case of maternal and not teacher reports, thereby confirmating a relationship-specific hypothesis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis Davis, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Zhi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: NTNU Social ScienceTrondheim, Norway; Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyTrondheim, Norway.
authors.forename: Beate W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Hygen
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Education, University of California, Riverside Riverside, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Keith F
authors.initials: KF
authors.lastname: Widaman
authors.affiliation: Regional Center for Child and YouthMental Health and Child Welfare, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim, Norway.
authors.forename: Turid S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Berg-Nielsen
authors.affiliation: NTNU Social ScienceTrondheim, Norway; Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyTrondheim, Norway.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wichstrøm
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis Davis, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Belsky
keywords: COMT; attachment disorganization; confirmatory analyses; replication; social behavior