Behavioral Genetics Research Articles

Three Typical Mental Disorders Associated With Behavioral Genetics And Environment

The purpose of the paper is to review the studies on family and identify the major factor contribute to these psychiatric problems. The basic psychiatric problem was range from bipolar disorder to antisocial personality disorder with the addition of reading disability. In the study of using the principle of animal behavior to research three different types of the psychiatric problem were being used to find out the influence of genetic and environment on both the history and current condition of the family and the impact on people’s future behavior with the experiment of how family study and twin study. This is a common psychiatric disease among current society due to the heavy pressure around people after reviewing different types of articles related to this psychiatric problem. The study was based on several datasets from the previous study, including 3 family studies and 6 twin studies with several different types of DSM questionnaires and interview information from thousands of twins with various in the category. With an analysis of all the statistical information, we conclude that the psychiatric problem is closely related. Both genetic and environmental are differentiated in the percentage of effect to the cause of the related problem.

Ideas of experimental pedagogy and pedagogical psychology in Russia and Kazakhstan

The article draws attention to the sphere of historical and pedagogical knowledge. Being a product of the development of human society, it lies at the core of contemporary and future pedagogical culture. The mature conventional wisdom helps people to forge their own path in the modern world, to determine their self-identification and the prospects for their personal growth. The historical heritage of the first half of the 20th century, rich in invariant ideas, scientific and pedagogical experience, is viewed here by means of its inclusion in the construction of all spheres of life in modern Russia and Kazakhstan, including the development of pedagogy and psychology. The article reveals the stages of scientific activity of the outstanding teacher and psychologist A.P. Nechaev, characterizing the main milestones and dynamics of the formation of domestic experimental pedagogy at the beginning of the 20th century. It highlights the scholar’s ideas about syndromic psychology, holistic, mental and moral development of the personality, which are relevant even today. The research is based on conceptual ideas of dialogical pedagogy, problem-personalistic approach, retrospective, comparative historical and historical-phenomenological methods. Experimental pedagogy as a phenomenon of the early 20th century ceased to exist without quite exhausting its capabilities, but it laid the foundation for and determined the strategic development direction of child psychology, pedagogical psychology, genetic psychology, childhood ethnography, differential psychology and differential psychophysiology, and the experiment became a sturdy part of the scholarly apparatus of pedagogy and psychology. The potential of experimental pedagogy made it possible to pose and solve large-scale issues of creating a new school, scientific and pedagogical centers, finding solutions to a wide range of psychological and pedagogical problems, designing research schools that develop natural science, psychological and pedagogical problems of education and upbringing. The invariant ideas of this direction of moral, mental and intellectual development of students are also relevant at the beginning of the 21st century and can be used in the practice of contemporary school education.

УЧЕНИЕ П.Я. ГАЛЬПЕРИНА ОБ ОРИЕНТИРОВКЕ И МЕТОДЫ ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ

The relevance of the study. The paper raises the problem of methods of psychological research, this problem is reflected in written and oral speeches of P. Ya. Galperin. The scientific significance of this problem is due to the fact that using the forming method allows us to obtain data concerning the laws of the formation of a new action in the conditions of not only controlled, but also its spontaneous formation. The purpose of the study is to obtain scientific psychological information concerning the forming method. The key concept of the theory of P. Ya. Galperin is the concept of orientation, which determines the success of the action. Polemizing with J. Piaget on the question of age capabilities of the child, P. Ya. Galperin experimentally showed that in the conditions of forming method “real mental actions and concepts” are formed much earlier than in the traditional spontaneous formation. If in the first case the process of formation becomes generally controllable, in the second it is only directed. The transition to the method of formation by stages, stressed P. Ya. Galperin, creates a basic for an appreciable improvement of the methods of instruction and means a radical change in the methods of psychological research. Methods — historical and psychological analysis, comparative analysis. The results. The publication consists of three parts. The main part (the middle one) is P.Ya. Galperin’s article «The cross-sectional method and the method of formation by stages». It is published on the materials of the personal archive of P. Ya. Galperin. The article, written by P. Ya. Galperin on the results of his speech at the International psychological Congress in Moscow in 1966, was previously published in the journal “Voprosy psyikhologii”, in this form article is a corrected version by P. Ya. Galperin. The first part of the paper is a short introduction providing a general characteristic of the Piaget and Galperin discussion on Psychological Congress. In conclusion (the third part) an attempt is made to identify the main lines on which it is possible to compare the views of P. Ya. Halperin and J. Piaget. The conclusion. The reference to the materials of Piaget and Galperin discussion is not only of historical and theoretical importance, but also allows us to outline the prospects of current scientific research in the field of genetic psychology.

Star of The Week Programs Based on Peer Relationship for Children Social Emotional Development

Star of The Week Programs Based on Peer Relationship for Children Social Emotional Development

Behavioral Genetics, Population Genetics, and Genetic Essentialism

The paper presents an experimental study that examines the conditions required for news about behavioral genetics to activate genetic essentialism beliefs. Nine hundred sixty-five adults living in the USA were randomly assigned to read either a control news article or one of the three versions of a news story about behavioral genetics. The cautious version presents a general introduction to behavioral genetics and examples while also discrediting the genetic determinist myth and clarifying that this field is not interested in studying differences between populations. Another version was identical to the cautious version, except that it mentioned high heritability estimates as supporting evidence. Finally, a third version included claims supporting Nicolas Wade’s (2014) main thesis, which argued that societies develop different institutions partly because of their population’s behavioral genetic predispositions. Compared to participants in the control group, those exposed to the high heritability version and the Wade’s thesis version reported higher scores on a scale measuring belief in genetics determinism. The results revealed no overall effect for the cautious version, but an exploratory interaction model indicates that reactions to this version vary depending on educational attainment. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Using Multimodel Inference/Model Averaging to Model Causes of Covariation Between Variables in Twins.

To explore and apply multimodel inference to test the relative contributions of latent genetic, environmental and direct causal factors to the covariation between two variables with data from the classical twin design by estimating model-averaged parameters. Behavior genetics is concerned with understanding the causes of variation in phenotypes and the causes of covariation between two or more phenotypes. Two variables may correlate as a result of genetic, shared environmental or unique environmental factors contributing to variation in both variables. Two variables may also correlate because one or both directly cause variation in the other. Furthermore, covariation may result from any combination of these sources, leading to 25 different identified structural equation models. OpenMx was used to fit all these models to account for covariation between two variables collected in twins. Multimodel inference and model averaging were used to summarize the key sources of covariation, and estimate the magnitude of these causes of covariance. Extensions of these models to test heterogeneity by sex are discussed. We illustrate the application of multimodel inference by fitting a comprehensive set of bivariate models to twin data from the Virginia Twin Study of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders. Analyses of body mass index and tobacco consumption data show sufficient power to reject distinct models, and to estimate the contribution of each of the five potential sources of covariation, irrespective of selecting the best fitting model. Discrimination between models on sample size, type of variable (continuous versus binary or ordinal measures) and the effect size of sources of variance and covariance. We introduce multimodel inference and model averaging approaches to the behavior genetics community, in the context of testing models for the causes of covariation between traits in term of genetic, environmental and causal explanations.

Genetics of Smoking Behaviors in American Indians.

The smoking behavior of American Indians (AI) differs from that of non-Hispanic whites (NHW). Typically light smokers, cessation interventions in AIs are generally less effective. To develop more effective cessation programs for AIs, clinicians, researchers, and public health workers need a better understanding of the genetic factors involved in their smoking behavior. Our aim was to assess whether SNPs associated with smoking behavior in NHWs are also associated with smoking in AIs. We collected questionnaire data on smoking behaviors and analyzed blood and saliva samples from two Tribal populations with dramatically different cultures and smoking prevalence, one in the Northern Plains (n = 323) and the other in the Southwest (n = 176). A total of 384 SNPs were genotyped using an Illumina custom GoldenGate platform. Samples were also assessed for cotinine and 3-hydroxycotinine as markers of nicotine intake and nicotine metabolite ratio. Among 499 participants, we identified, in the Northern Plains sample only, a variant of the gamma-aminobutyric acid receptor subunit alpha-2 (GABRA2) (rs2119767) on chromosome 4p that was associated with many of the intake biomarkers of smoking we examined, suggesting a role for this gene in modifying smoking behavior in this population. We also identified three SNPs, in the Southwest sample only, as significant correlates of only cigarettes per day: rs4274224, rs4245147 (both dopamine receptor D2 gene), and rs1386493 (tryptophan hydroxylase 2 gene). The contribution of many genes known to underlie smoking behaviors in NHWs may differ in AIs. Once validated, these variants could be useful in developing more effective cessation strategies.

Can a brief intervention alter genetic and environmental influences on psychological traits? An experimental behavioral genetics approach

Mindset interventions are designed to encourage students to adopt a growth mindset, reflecting the belief that one’s intelligence can be improved in an effort to increase academic achievement. How do these interventions exert their effects? We assessed the effects of an online mindset intervention on mindset and four outcome variables, grit, locus of control, challenge-seeking behavior, and cognitive ability test performance in a sample of 1668 twins in 840 families. The mindset intervention successfully induced a growth mindset, but had no effect on the outcome variables. Biometric modeling of self-reported mindset before and after the intervention further revealed that this mean change in mindset was accompanied by changes in its etiology. At baseline, nonshared environmental contributions to individual differences in mindset predominated, while additive genetic contributions were small-to-moderate and shared environmental contributions were negligible. After the intervention, there was an increase in additive genetic contributions to individual differences in mindset. In other words, despite its very brief nature, our simple environmental intervention acted to increase the heritability of mindset. Such findings suggest that interventions may sometimes exert their effects by altering the genetic influences on a trait.

Gender Differences in Depression: Evidence From Genetics.

Compared with men, female accounts for a larger proportion of patients with depression. Behavioral genetics researches find gender differences in genetic underpinnings of depression. We found that gender differences exist in heritability and the gene associated with depression after reviewing relevant research. Both genes and gene-environment interactions contribute to the risk of depression in a gender-specific manner. We detailed the relationships between serotonin transporter gene-linked promoter region (5-HTTLPR) and depression. However, the results of these studies are very different. We explored the reasons for the contradictory conclusions and provided some suggestions for future research on the gender differences in genetic underpinnings of depression.

Behavior Genetics Association 50th Annual Meeting Abstracts.

Behavior Genetics Association 50th Annual Meeting Abstracts.

Effect Sizes, Power, and Biases in Intelligence Research: A Meta-Meta-Analysis.

In this meta-study, we analyzed 2442 effect sizes from 131 meta-analyses in intelligence research, published from 1984 to 2014, to estimate the average effect size, median power, and evidence for bias. We found that the average effect size in intelligence research was a Pearson’s correlation of 0.26, and the median sample size was 60. Furthermore, across primary studies, we found a median power of 11.9% to detect a small effect, 54.5% to detect a medium effect, and 93.9% to detect a large effect. We documented differences in average effect size and median estimated power between different types of intelligence studies (correlational studies, studies of group differences, experiments, toxicology, and behavior genetics). On average, across all meta-analyses (but not in every meta-analysis), we found evidence for small-study effects, potentially indicating publication bias and overestimated effects. We found no differences in small-study effects between different study types. We also found no convincing evidence for the decline effect, US effect, or citation bias across meta-analyses. We concluded that intelligence research does show signs of low power and publication bias, but that these problems seem less severe than in many other scientific fields.

Does Parental Separation Lower Genetic Influences on Children's School Performance?

AbstractObjectiveA behavioral genetics approach is used to test whether parental separation lowers the importance of genes for children's school performance.BackgroundThe Scarr–Rowe hypothesis, which states that the relative importance of genes on cognitive ability is higher for advantaged compared to disadvantaged children, has been expanded to educational outcomes. However, advantage/disadvantage is predominantly conceptualized as parental socioeconomic status and neglects other important factors. This study expands upon the literature to include family structure as an indicator for advantage/disadvantage.MethodData from TwinLife, a new population‐register‐based sample of twins and their families in Germany, and ACE variance decomposition models are used to estimate the heritability of cognitive ability (NPairs = 896), school grades (NPairs = 740), and academic self‐concept (NPairs = 949) separately for single‐parent and two‐parent households.ResultsFindings show that the relative importance of genes on children's cognitive ability and academic self‐concept is lower for children in single‐parent households compared to two‐parent households (32–47% and 23–50%, respectively), but differences are negligible for math grades (41–43%). ACE models adjusted for mothers' education and household income retrieve substantively similar results.ConclusionThe quality of the family environment that is important for the realization of children's genetic potential is not just shaped by socioeconomic status, but also family structure.

Genetic psychology: problems and perspective (basics of concept)

Modern practical psychology is rather a many-colored and, at the same time, a sad picture. A great number of empirical data (which very often tell about something they do not know), handmade, everyday in their essence theoretical schemes, which usually describe only one thing – peculiarities for mental process of their authors and somewhere quite apart – the fundamental philosophic methodological provisions about being and awareness, activity, essence and phenomenon, etc.
 The important motive of our higher attention to methodological bases for genesis of psychics is the desire to get moving a number of problems in psychological practice. The absence of efficient theoretical basis causes, for example, to the situation when such necessary and important work in the sphere of child developmental psychology is just absent or is based only on everyday notions of general psychologist.
 Our data also tell that the integrity in ontogenesis of psychics should be considered in another plane – as integrity of human life journey since birth until death. Hereby we should not abstract from anatomic morphological structures (dispositions), about which our psychology shyly kept silence for many years. So, the specificity of ontogenetic human development is that it is subject to effect of biological laws (as development of animals) and effect of social historical laws.
 Thus, the object of genetic psychology is personality, spiritual physical individual, born by its own subject-based practical activity, which later is transformed into its own activity in some aspects.

Religion versus Science II: Why Science Is Wrong about Life and Evolution, and Where Religious Beliefs Can Find Objective Traction

Traditional religions posit a nonmaterial, spiritual aspect of life. Science rejects that possibility and given the contemporary intellectual hegemony enjoyed by science, that has greatly deflated support for religious perspectives. This paper introduces the countervailing position, that the extraordinary claims associated with the scientific vision have always been a stretch—beginning with a reliance on DNA for exceptional behaviors. That stretch is now unfolding in a broad failure as huge efforts to identify the DNA (or genetic) origins for disease and behavioral tendencies (in the realms of personal genomics and behavioral genetics, respectively) have been an “absolutely beyond belief” failure. This paper will discuss this unfolding heritability crisis, and then indirectly further it with consideration of challenges posed by some unusual behaviors including taboo and accepted paradoxes. A basic point herein is that objectively challenging science’s bedrock position of materialism—which has been an immense obstacle in the path of finding meaningful support for religious perspectives—is not difficult. A final point touched on here is that science’s physics-only based model of evolution never made sense as a possible vehicle for dualistic or transcendent phenomena, and thus the unfolding failure of genetics further deserves the attention of those investigating religious perspectives.

Awards Presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the BEHAVIOR GENETICS ASSOCIATION Held Online on Friday, June 26 2020.

Awards Presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the BEHAVIOR GENETICS ASSOCIATION Held Online on Friday, June 26 2020.

Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting of the Members of the BEHAVIOR GENETICS ASSOCIATION Online Friday, June 26, 2020, 10-11am (US Eastern).

Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting of the Members of the BEHAVIOR GENETICS ASSOCIATION Online Friday, June 26, 2020, 10-11am (US Eastern).

Different mating contexts lead to extensive rewiring of female brain coexpression networks in the guppy.

Understanding the basis of behavior requires dissecting the complex waves of gene expression that underlie how the brain processes stimuli and produces an appropriate response. In order to determine the dynamic nature of the neurogenomic network underlying mate choice, we use transcriptome sequencing to capture the female neurogenomic response in two brain regions involved in sensory processing and decision-making under different mating and social contexts. We use differential coexpression (DC) analysis to evaluate how gene networks in the brain are rewired when a female evaluates attractive and nonattractive males, greatly extending current single-gene approaches to assess changes in the broader gene regulatory network. We find the brain experiences a remarkable amount of network rewiring in the different mating and social contexts we tested. Further analysis indicates the network differences across contexts are associated with behaviorally relevant functions and pathways, particularly learning, memory and other cognitive functions. Finally, we identify the loci that display social context-dependent connections, revealing the basis of how relevant neurological and metabolic pathways are differentially recruited in distinct social contexts. More broadly, our findings contribute to our understanding of the genetics of mating and social behavior by identifying gene drivers behind behavioral neural processes, illustrating the utility of DC analysis in neurosciences and behavior.

Announcement of the Fulker Award for a Paper Published in Behavior Genetics, Volume 49, 2019

Announcement of the Fulker Award for a Paper Published in Behavior Genetics, Volume 49, 2019

THE CONTRIBUTION OF PSYCHOGENETICS TO EDUCATION

Here is a review of the book by British psychogeneticists K. Asbury and R. Plomin, «G is for genes: The impact of genetics on education and achievement» which is intended to promote the success of all children, regardless of their abilities, development, social status, for the benefit of the children themselves. , their families and society at large. The book presents the results of the latest numerous behavioral genetics studies that have been carried out in different countries of the world. This results show that the role of genetic factors in human learning and life success is not absolute and that the impact of the environment is no less important than genes. This thesis is a base of the personalized child education idea. Based on an analysis of the research results, the authors of the book assert that school education should be personalized. It is the personalization of learning that will ensure to develop the thinking ability, acquire knowledge and skills at a pace and direction that is appropriate for each child.Personalized learning should be based on the following principles: a minimization of the core curriculum and test basic knowledge and skills; a maximizing of options to all pupils alongside the compulsory basic knowledge and skills; a stopping of labeling ability of children; an individual education of each pupil; a teaching of children to achieve success; a promotion of equal opportunities for children from an early age; an availability of out-of-school education for all children; a two-stage physical education program; wide choice of future life ways; a training of new teachers in genetics and a giving them the methods to put it into pedagogical practice; the scale of schools in directions and levels of education. Finally, the authors of the book offer their vision of a school that will be based on the laws of behavioral genetics.The contents of the book by K. Asbury and R. Plomin, «G is for genes: The impact of genetics on education and achievement» are extremely relevant to reform Ukrainian education, to enhance teachers’ professional competence, and to improve the training of student at Ukrainian pedagogical universities. The book should be published in Ukrainian. This publication will be an interesting and useful handbook for policymakers, educators and parents with its constructive recommendations on one of the most important educational challenges – how to prepare each and every child for a successful life in today’s ever-changing world.

The effects of small but abrupt change in temperature on the behavior of larval zebrafish

The zebrafish has become increasingly utilized in behavioral neuroscience, psychopharmacology, and behavior genetics research. However, little attention has been paid to the potential effects of environmental conditions fish are exposed to before and during behavioral testing. One such important factor is temperature, more specifically, the difference in temperature between holding and test tanks. In the current study, we bred and raised zebrafish of the AB strain in 28 °C water for 7 days until they were free swimming. On the 7th day we placed each experimental subject singly into the testing well with water set to 24 °C, 28 °C or 30 °C for 15 min and recorded the behavior of the subjects. We found significant and behavior-specific idiosyncratic effects of the employed temperature changes. For example, lowering the temperature decreased speed, but increasing the temperature did not alter it. Increased temperature reduced duration of immobility and reduced absolute turn angle, but lowered temperature did not alter these behaviors. While lowered temperature, and to a lesser degree also increased temperature, reduced intra-individual temporal variance of absolute turn angle. Furthermore, we found no change in thigmotaxis and frequency of immobility by either temperature change. Our results demonstrate the importance of temperature in behavioral studies with zebrafish and suggest that equating water temperature between holding and testing tanks is required to enhance reproducibility and replicability of results with this species.