Lichtenstein P, Annas P
Department of Medical Epidemiology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2000 Oct;41(7):927-37.
Fears and phobias are relatively common in childhood. Both environmental and genetic theories have tried to explain the etiology behind these conditions. However, data supporting the different theories are sparse. To investigate the relative importance of genetic and environmental influences on specific phobias and fears, parental reports of animal, situational, and mutilation fears and phobias were completed for 1106 pairs of 8- to 9-year-old Swedish twins. The prevalence of specific phobias was 7.3% for boys and 10.0% for girls. Genetic. shared environmental, and nonshared environmental effects contributed to individual differences in fears and phobias in young children, but the magnitude of the effects differed between sexes. Shared environmental effects contributed to a general susceptibility for fearfulness. Genetic and nonshared environmental effects, on the other hand, contributed both to the general susceptibility and specific fearfulness, even though these effects primarily were fear specific. These results indicate that both heritable factors as well as environmental factors such as trauma, vicarious learning, and/or negative information are important for differences in fearfulness and phobias--at least in children.
恐惧和恐惧症在儿童时期较为常见。环境理论和遗传理论都试图解释这些情况背后的病因。然而，支持不同理论的数据并不充分。为了研究遗传和环境因素对特定恐惧症和恐惧的相对重要性，我们针对1106对8至9岁的瑞典双胞胎完成了关于动物、情境以及伤残恐惧和恐惧症的父母报告。男孩特定恐惧症的患病率为7.3%，女孩为10.0%。遗传因素、共同环境因素和非共同环境因素导致了幼儿恐惧和恐惧症的个体差异，但这些影响的程度在性别之间有所不同。共同环境因素导致了对恐惧的一般易感性。另一方面，遗传因素和非共同环境因素既导致了一般易感性，也导致了特定的恐惧，尽管这些影响主要是针对特定恐惧的。这些结果表明，遗传因素以及诸如创伤、替代性学习和/或负面信息等环境因素对于恐惧和恐惧症的差异都很重要——至少在儿童中是这样。
