Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK.
Department of Psychiatry, National Taiwan University Hospital and College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan.
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2019 Mar;28(3):367-375. doi: 10.1007/s00787-018-1200-6. Epub 2018 Jul 13.
Symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, in particular inattention symptoms, are associated with academic achievement. However, whether and why the developmental course of inattention symptoms (i.e. systematic decreases or increases of symptoms with age) predicts academic achievement remains unclear. A total of 5634 twin pairs born in the UK were included in the current study. We used latent growth curve modelling to estimate the baseline level and the developmental course of inattention symptoms (assessed at ages 8, 11, 14 and 16 years) and test whether they predicted the General Certificate of Secondary Education scores (GCSE, at age 16 years). We then implemented multivariate twin modelling to determine the role of genetic and environmental factors in explaining the relationship between inattention symptoms and GCSE scores. Increasing inattention symptoms across childhood and adolescence predicted poorer GCSE scores independently of the baseline level of inattention. Genetic factors explained most of this relationship, i.e. genetic factors contributing to individual differences in the developmental course of inattention also influenced GCSE scores. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that genetic factors underlying the developmental course of inattention symptoms across childhood and adolescence also influence academic achievement. This may result from indirect mechanism, whereby genetic factors explain systematic changes in inattention levels with age, which in turn impact academic achievement. The shared genetic aetiology may also suggest common neurobiological processes underlying both the developmental course of inattention symptoms and academic achievement.
注意缺陷多动障碍的症状，尤其是注意力不集中的症状，与学业成绩有关。然而，注意力不集中症状的发展过程（即症状随年龄的系统下降或增加）是否以及为何预测学业成绩尚不清楚。本研究共纳入了 5634 对出生于英国的双胞胎。我们使用潜在增长曲线模型来估计注意力不集中症状的基线水平和发展过程（在 8、11、14 和 16 岁时评估），并检验它们是否预测普通中等教育证书（GCSE）成绩（在 16 岁时）。然后，我们实施了多变量双胞胎模型，以确定遗传和环境因素在解释注意力不集中症状与 GCSE 成绩之间的关系中的作用。儿童期和青春期注意力不集中症状的增加独立于注意力不集中的基线水平，预示着 GCSE 成绩较差。遗传因素解释了这种关系的大部分，即导致儿童期和青春期注意力不集中症状发展过程中个体差异的遗传因素也影响 GCSE 成绩。总之，我们的研究表明，注意力不集中症状发展过程中的遗传因素也会影响学业成绩。这可能是由于遗传因素解释了注意力水平随年龄的系统变化，进而影响了学业成绩。共同的遗传病因也可能表明注意力不集中症状和学业成绩发展过程的潜在神经生物学过程是相似的。
