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Hyperactivity/Inattention Problems Moderate Environmental but Not Genetic Mediation Between Negative Parenting and Conduct Problems

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Abstract

This study investigated the association between negative parenting (NP) and conduct problems (CP) in 6-year-old twins, taking into account the severity of hyperactivity/inattention problems (HIAP). Analyses of the data from 1,677 pairs of twins and their parents revealed that the shared environmental covariance between NP and CP was moderated by the level of HIAP but not by CP or NP, where the shared environmental covariance was larger in children with higher levels of HIAP than in children with lower levels of HIAP. The genetic covariance between NP and CP was not moderated by the level of HIAP, whereas it was larger in the group with lower levels of CP and NP than in the group with higher levels. These results suggest that severe HIAP strengthens shared environmental associations between NP and CP and that interventions focusing on the shared environmental component of NP would be effective for parents and children with severe HIAP.

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Notes

  1. The response rate was 26.5%. Although this response rate was higher than that in an adolescent and young adult twin study in Japan (Shikisima et al. 2006), it is lower than those in Western twin studies. The lower response rate may have biased our sample. Unfortunately, we could not compare those who participated in our survey with those who did not because we were not permitted to link participation data with personal information in the registry. Low response rates are not confined to twin studies in Japan. Response rates in large-scale population-based surveys in Japan are decreasing year by year (Ogiwara 2009; Shinogi 2010). This trend strengthened after the Personal Information Protection Law was put into operation in 2005 in Japan (Shinogi 2010).

  2. Means of measures were not significantly different by respondents when conducting t-tests with a significance level of 0.05 after a Bonferroni correction. Thus, we conducted analyses regardless of respondents.

  3. The common nonshared environmental factor accounting for the covariance between CP and NP in the independent pathway model does not include error. Errors are included in nonshared environmental factors that uniquely influence CP (Ecp in Fig. 1) and NP (Enp in Fig. 1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities & Social Science, Faculty of Letters, Keio University, Mita 2-15-45, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 108-8345, Japan

    Keiko K. Fujisawa & Juko Ando

  2. Keio Advanced Research Center, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

    Shinji Yamagata

  3. The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo, Japan

    Koken Ozaki

Authors
  1. Keiko K. Fujisawa
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  2. Shinji Yamagata
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  3. Koken Ozaki
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  4. Juko Ando
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Correspondence to Keiko K. Fujisawa.

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Fujisawa, K.K., Yamagata, S., Ozaki, K. et al. Hyperactivity/Inattention Problems Moderate Environmental but Not Genetic Mediation Between Negative Parenting and Conduct Problems. J Abnorm Child Psychol 40, 189–200 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-011-9559-6

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