Hart Sara A, Little Callie, van Bergen Elsje
Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
Florida Center for Reading Research, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
NPJ Sci Learn. 2021 Jan 8;6(1):2. doi: 10.1038/s41539-020-00079-z.
Across a wide range of studies, researchers often conclude that the home environment and children's outcomes are causally linked. In contrast, behavioral genetic studies show that parents influence their children by providing them with both environment and genes, meaning the environment that parents provide should not be considered in the absence of genetic influences, because that can lead to erroneous conclusions on causation. This article seeks to provide behavioral scientists with a synopsis of numerous methods to estimate the direct effect of the environment, controlling for the potential of genetic confounding. Ideally, using genetically sensitive designs can fully disentangle this genetic confound, but these require specialized samples. In the near future, researchers will likely have access to measured DNA variants (summarized in a polygenic scores), which could serve as a partial genetic control, but that is currently not an option that is ideal or widely available. We also propose a work around for when genetically sensitive data are not readily available: the Familial Control Method. In this method, one measures the same trait in the parents as the child, and the parents' trait is then used as a covariate (e.g., a genetic proxy). When these options are all not possible, we plead with our colleagues to clearly mention genetic confound as a limitation, and to be cautious with any environmental causal statements which could lead to unnecessary parent blaming.
在广泛的研究中，研究人员常常得出家庭环境与儿童成长结果存在因果关系的结论。相比之下，行为遗传学研究表明，父母通过为孩子提供环境和基因来影响他们，这意味着在没有遗传影响的情况下，不应考虑父母提供的环境，因为这可能导致关于因果关系的错误结论。本文旨在为行为科学家提供一系列方法的概述，以估计环境的直接影响，同时控制遗传混杂的可能性。理想情况下，使用基因敏感设计可以完全消除这种遗传混杂，但这需要专门的样本。在不久的将来，研究人员可能会获得测量的DNA变异（以多基因分数汇总），这可以作为部分遗传控制，但目前这不是一个理想或广泛可用的选择。我们还提出了一种在基因敏感数据不易获得时的变通方法：家族对照法。在这种方法中，测量父母与孩子相同的特质，然后将父母的特质用作协变量（例如，遗传代理）。当这些选择都不可行时，我们恳请同事们明确将遗传混杂作为一个局限性提及，并对任何可能导致不必要的指责父母的环境因果陈述持谨慎态度。
