Stephanie Schmitz1,2 & David W. Fulker2
Both mothers and teachers assessed a sample of same-sex twin with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL/4-18; Achenbach, 1991; University of Vermont, Burlington, VT)/Teacher Rating Form (TRF; Achenbach, 1991; University of Vermont, Burlington, V) while the children were in first grade. These ratings showed that attention problems correlated highly with other aspects of problem behavior and to a slightly stronger degree with those from the externalizing than the internalizing domain (rs of .58 and .53 for mother and .62 and .47 for teacher ratings, respectively). For teacher ratings, the hyperactivity aspect of attention problems was slightly stronger associated with externalizing (.71 vs. .38) while inattention correlated with internalizing and externalizing with a similar magnitude (r of .51 and .48, respectively). Univariate analyses showed that parameter estimates for genetic influences tended to be higher for maternal than teacher ratings (.72 vs. .44 for the overall attention problem score) and that while the shared environment influenced hyperactivity to some degree, it was non-significant for inattention. Multivariate analyses showed that the observed phenotypic association of attention problems with other aspects of problem behavior was mainly due to common genetic influences. Shared environmental correlations were often close to unity but did not contribute much to the expected phenotypic correlation. Sex differences in these associations will be explored.
Address: University of Colorado, Campus Box 447, Boulder, CO 80309-0447, tel. (303) 315-7114/492-0835, fax (303) 315-6606/492-8063, email schmitzs@essx.uchsc.edu or schmitzs@colorado.edu, URL http://ibgwww.colorad o.edu/~schmitzs
1University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, CPH Box C268-69, Denver, CO 80262 2Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado, Campus Box 447, Boulder, CO 80309-0447 3Supported by NIH grant HD 18426 and a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. S.S. is partly supported by grant MH 15442.