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A Twin Study of the Relationships between Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome and Anxiety Phenotypes in Childhood and Adolescence

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Abstract

Data on the etiological factors underlying the co-occurrence of Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome (CDS) with anxiety symptoms are very limited. The present study investigated the nature of latent shared etiological elements in 400 Italian twin pairs aged 8–18, explaining the covariation between CDS and anxiety symptoms. Preliminary analysis demonstrated significant correlations between Child Behaviour Checklist/6–18 Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Scale and two (Somatic Anxiety, Generalized Anxiety) out of five Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders anxiety subscales. Results from causal analysis seem to exclude the hypothesis that co-occurrence between CDS and Anxiety Symptoms could be due to a direct phenotypic effect of one trait upon the other. Model fitting-analysis indicated that the aforementioned associations were partially explained by shared genetic and environmental factors influencing a common liability factor. A latent variable capturing the covariation between CDS and anxiety problems can be considered as a unifying (patho)physiological mechanism/system common to these constructs. Our results support the adoption of a broader view of the relationships between CDS and anxiety phenotypes in childhood and adolescence for both clinicians and educators.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Child and Youth Lab, Sigmund Freud University, Ripa Di Porta Ticinese 77, 20143, Milan, Italy

    Simona Scaini & Gaia De Giuli

  2. Centre for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health, Istituto Superiore Di Sanità, Rome, Italy

    Emanuela Medda, Maria Antonietta Stazi, Cristina D’Ippolito & Corrado Fagnani

  3. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Marco Battaglia

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Marco Battaglia

  5. Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Marco Battaglia

Authors
  1. Simona Scaini
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  2. Emanuela Medda
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  3. Marco Battaglia
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  4. Gaia De Giuli
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  5. Maria Antonietta Stazi
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  6. Cristina D’Ippolito
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  7. Corrado Fagnani
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Simona Scaini, Emanuela Medda, Marco Battaglia, Maria Antonietta Stazi, Corrado Fagnani; Methodology: Simona Scaini, Emanuela Medda, Marco Battaglia, Corrado Fagnani; Formal Analysis and investigation: Simona Scaini, Gaia De Giuli, Corrado Fagnani; Writing- original draft preparation: Simona Scaini, Gaia De Giuli; Writing- review and editing: Simona Scaini, Emanuela Medda, Marco Battaglia, Gaia De Giuli, Maria Antonietta Stazi, Cristina D’Ippolito, Corrado Fagnani.

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Correspondence to Simona Scaini.

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All study procedures were accepted by the ethics committee of the Italian National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Scaini, S., Medda, E., Battaglia, M. et al. A Twin Study of the Relationships between Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome and Anxiety Phenotypes in Childhood and Adolescence. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 51, 949–960 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-023-01029-0

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