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Published on: September 19, 2019
Parent-child interaction at age 5 months: genetic and environmental contributions and associations with later
Irzam Hardiansyah1,2, Petra Warreyn3, Angelica Ronald4
1Department of Womens' and Children's Health, Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Karolinska Institutet (KIND), Karolinska Institutet & Stockholm Health Care Services, Region Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden.
Insights
Parental sensitive responsiveness in infancy predicts better child development. This study found low heritability for parent-child interaction (PCI) traits, emphasizing environmental influences on early social development.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Behavioral Genetics
- Child Psychiatry
Background:
- Parent-child interaction (PCI) in early life influences later child development.
- Twin studies help differentiate genetic and environmental contributions to PCI.
- Child's genetics can shape their social environment, including parental behavior.
Purpose of the Study:
- To map the phenotypic and etiological structure of early parent-child interaction (PCI).
- To investigate the genetic and environmental influences on PCI traits.
- To examine the relationship between early PCI and later child development outcomes.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a classical twin design with infant twins (354 monozygotic, 268 dizygotic).
- Assessed parent-child interaction (PCI) at 5 months of age.
- Examined links between PCI and child social communication, language, and autistic traits at 2-3 years.
Main Results:
- Heritability for PCI traits was consistently below 20%.
- Unique environmental influences showed significant overlap across PCI scales.
- Identified three key latent factors: 'child negative affect', 'positive affective interaction', and 'parent's supportive strategies'.
- High parental sensitive responsiveness at 5 months predicted better socio-communicative and language development and fewer autistic traits later.
Conclusions:
- Parental sensitive responsiveness in infancy is linked to developmental gains in children.
- Limited evidence for evocative genetic effects on parental behavior was found.
- Challenges in capturing the full richness of parent-child interaction with lab-based measures were discussed.
Background:
Characteristics of parent-child interaction (PCI) early in life have been associated with later development in the child. Twin studies can help to disentangle child contributions to parent-child interaction, for example, by assessing the influence of the child's genetics on his/her social environment, which includes parental behaviour.
Methods:
Infant twins from a community sample [354 monozygotic (MZ), 268 same-sex dizygotic (DZ)] were assessed in terms of PCI at age 5 months. We used the classical twin design to map the aetiology of several parent and child PCI scales and their covariation. We investigated the relations between PCI and later parent-rated child's social communication, language, and autistic traits at ages 2 and 3.
Results:
Heritability was below 20% for all the included PCI traits. Unique (nonshared) environmental influences substantially overlapped across several PCI scales, suggesting that idiosyncrasies linked to each session shaped the scoring of several traits in a systematic way. Factor analysis revealed three uncorrelated latent factors, which were conceptualized as 'child negative affect', 'positive affective interaction', and 'parent's supportive strategies'. Parents who were rated highly on 'sensitive responsiveness' at 5 months tended to rate their offspring higher in terms of socio-communicative and language development and lower in terms of autistic traits in the second and third years of life.
Conclusions:
This study maps the phenotypic and aetiological structure of PCI in early infancy and supports the view that parents' sensitive responsiveness towards their infant is associated with later developmental gains in several domains. We did not find strong evidence of any so-called evocative genetic effects on parents' behaviour. We discuss the results considering the general challenge for lab-based observational PCI measures to capture the richness of parent-child interaction.
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