Perry Lucas C, Chevalier Nicolas, Luciano Michelle
School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh.
Dev Psychol. 2025 Aug;61(8):1594-1605. doi: 10.1037/dev0001919. Epub 2025 Jan 20.
Twin studies have suggested extremely high estimates of heritability for adolescent executive function, with no substantial contributions from shared environment. However, developmental psychology research has found significant correlations between executive function outcomes and elements of the environment that would be shared in twins. It is unclear whether these seemingly contradictory findings are best explained by genetic confounding in developmental studies or limitations in twin studies, which can potentially underestimate shared environment. In this study, we use genetic and phenotypic data from 5,939 participants, 4,827 participant mothers, and 2,903 participant fathers in the Millennium cohort to examine the role of genetics in explaining common environmental associations with executive function, assessed by the spatial working memory (SWM) task and Cambridge Gambling task. Bivariate genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) revealed that single-nucleotide polymorphism effects were the sole significant predictor of the association between SWM and both maternal education and prenatal smoking. maternal GCTA and trioGCTA also found no significant evidence of indirect genetic effects on SWM, indicating that genetic nurture is unlikely to explain the bivariate GCTA results. The Cambridge Gambling task showed no significant single-nucleotide polymorphism heritability, suggesting that genetic influences on hot executive function may differ significantly from those on cool executive function. This study supports the twin study claim that the working memory component of executive function is primarily a genetic trait with minimal influence from shared environment, emphasizing the importance of using genetically sensitive designs to ensure that genetic confounding does not falsely inflate estimates of environmental influences on traits. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
双胞胎研究表明，青少年执行功能的遗传率估计极高，共享环境没有实质性贡献。然而，发展心理学研究发现，执行功能结果与双胞胎共享的环境因素之间存在显著相关性。目前尚不清楚，这些看似矛盾的发现，是由发展研究中的基因混杂因素，还是由双胞胎研究中的局限性（可能会低估共享环境）能得到最好的解释。在本研究中，我们使用了千禧队列中5939名参与者、4827名参与者母亲和2903名参与者父亲的基因和表型数据，以研究基因在解释与执行功能的共同环境关联中的作用，执行功能通过空间工作记忆（SWM）任务和剑桥赌博任务进行评估。双变量全基因组复杂性状分析（GCTA）显示，单核苷酸多态性效应是SWM与母亲教育程度和产前吸烟之间关联的唯一显著预测因素。母亲GCTA和三联体GCTA也没有发现对SWM有间接遗传效应的显著证据，这表明遗传培育不太可能解释双变量GCTA的结果。剑桥赌博任务没有显示出显著的单核苷酸多态性遗传率，这表明基因对热执行功能的影响可能与对冷执行功能的影响有显著差异。本研究支持双胞胎研究的观点，即执行功能的工作记忆成分主要是一种遗传性状，共享环境的影响最小，强调了使用基因敏感设计的重要性，以确保基因混杂不会错误地夸大对性状环境影响的估计。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2025美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
