Schlag Fenja, de Hoyos Lucía, Verhoef Ellen, Klassmann Alexander, van den Bedem Simone, Fisher Simon E, Verhulst Brad, St Pourcain Beate
Language and Genetics Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Institute for Genetics, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
bioRxiv. 2025 Jul 29:2025.07.26.666154. doi: 10.1101/2025.07.26.666154.
Cognitive, language, and social abilities are complex, heritable and intertwined traits shaping children's development and later mental health. To better understand cross-trait interrelationships, we model here the structures of shared genomic and shared non-genomic/residual (i.e. broadly environmental) influences, and their correlation ( ), investigating cognitive, language, and social behavioural/communication measures.
Data were obtained for unrelated children (8-13 years) from two population-based cohorts: the UK Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC, N≤6,543) and the US Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N≤4,412), and analyses were carried out implementing an extended data-driven genetic-relationship-matrix structural equation modelling (GRM-SEM) approach.
In ALSPAC, we identified two independent phenotypic domains, each captured by a structurally matching pair consisting of a genomic (A) and a non-genomic/residual (E) factor. The first domain reflected cognitive/language difficulties, with the largest genomic and residual factor loadings ( and , respectively) for verbal IQ ( ; ). The second domain captured social difficulties, with the largest and for social communication measures ( ; ). We identified trait-specific between pairs of A and E factors with different directions of effect (cognition/language , social ). patterns were linked to increased measurable A and E contributions for cognition/language difficulties, but decreased contributions for social problems. Analyses in ABCD confirmed the two domains for E and phenotypic structures, although genomic contributions were low.
In childhood, cognitive/language abilities versus social abilities are influenced by distinct genomic and/or environmental factors, potentially interlinked through trait-specific , suggesting differences in developmental processes.
认知、语言和社交能力是复杂的、可遗传的且相互交织的特质，塑造着儿童的发育及后期心理健康。为了更好地理解跨特质的相互关系，我们在此对共享基因组和共享非基因组/残差（即广义环境）影响的结构及其相关性（ ）进行建模，研究认知、语言和社会行为/沟通指标。
从两个基于人群的队列中获取了无关儿童（8 - 13岁）的数据：英国埃文父母与儿童纵向研究（ALSPAC，N≤6543）和美国青少年大脑认知发展（ABCD）研究（N≤4412），并采用扩展的数据驱动遗传关系矩阵结构方程建模（GRM - SEM）方法进行分析。
在ALSPAC中，我们识别出两个独立的表型域，每个表型域由一对结构匹配的基因组（A）和非基因组/残差（E）因子组成。第一个域反映认知/语言困难，言语智商的基因组和残差因子负荷最大（分别为 和 ； ； ）。第二个域反映社交困难，社交沟通指标的 和 最大（ ； ）。我们识别出具有不同效应方向的A和E因子对之间的特质特异性 （认知/语言 ，社交 ）。 模式与认知/语言困难中可测量的A和E贡献增加相关，但与社交问题的贡献减少相关。ABCD研究的分析证实了E和表型结构的两个域，尽管基因组贡献较低。
在儿童期，认知/语言能力与社交能力受到不同的基因组和/或环境因素影响，可能通过特质特异性 相互关联，这表明发育过程存在差异。
