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We thank the study participants and research staff. This research was supported by NICHD Grant HD38075. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development or the National Institutes of Health.
There is an established literature pointing to the importance of children's systems of self-regulation in deterring the development of externalizing behavior problems such as aggression and delinquency. Children with more difficulties in self-regulation show more externalizing problems concurrently and longitudinally, suggesting a synergy between the two constructs. Yet, the underlying etiology of individual differences in this developmental process is unclear. In the current study, we examined the concurrent and longitudinal associations between externalizing problems and behavioral indicators of attention regulation to estimate additive and interactive genetic and nongenetic influences using a twin behavioral genetic design.
Externalizing Problems and Attention Regulation
There is mounting evidence that good attention regulation plays a central role in a healthy developmental trajectory that is relatively free from behavioral and emotional problems. Difficulties with regulating attention are associated with more aggressive and delinquent behaviors concurrently and longitudinally (Kochanska & Knaack, 2003; Murray & Kochanska, 2002; Olson, Sameroff, Kerr, Lopez, & Wellman, 2005; Zhou et al., 2007). Children with better attention regulation are more able and flexible in choosing the "to be attended to" information in the external world and in their internal thought processes. Refocusing attention can be an effective strategy in modulating anger, thereby reducing its contribution to antisocial behavior (Kim & Deater-Deckard, 2011; Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Terranova, & Kithakye, 2010; Rothbart, Ellis, Rueda, & Posner, 2003). Attention regulation can also be used to inhibit impulsive inappropriate actions (Posner & Rothbart, 2006).
Behavioral genetic studies have been conducted to clarify the genetic and nongenetic etiology underlying the link between externalizing problems and attention regulation. Univariate behavioral genetic studies have suggested that individual differences in externalizing problems are attributable to moderate genetic, modest shared environmental (i.e., nongenetic factors that contribute to family member similarity) and moderate nonshared environmental (i.e., nongenetic factors that do not contribute to family member similarity) sources of variance (Miles & Carey, 1997; Rhee & Waldman, 2002). The longitudinal stability of individual differences...