The relationship between empathy and executive functions among young adolescents.

Empathy and executive functions (EFs) are multimodal constructs that enable individuals to cope with their environment. Both abilities develop throughout childhood and are known to contribute to social behavior and academic performance in young adolescents. Notably, mentalizing and EF activate shared frontotemporal brain areas, which in previous studies of adults led researchers to suggest that at least some aspects of empathy depend on intact EF mechanisms. Despite the substantial development that empathy and EF undergo during adolescence, no study to date has systematically examined the associations between components of empathy and EF in this age group. Here, we explore these associations using data from an online battery of tasks, collected as part of a longitudinal twin study (N = 593; Mage 11.09 ± 0.2; 53.46% female, Israeli adolescents from Jewish decent). Using a confirmatory factor analysis, we quantified the associations between the main components of empathy (mentalizing and interpersonal concern) and of EF (working memory [WM], inhibition and shifting [IaS]). We found that WM was related to both mentalizing and interpersonal concern, whereas IaS were related to mentalizing but not to interpersonal concern. We also discuss the genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in each factor. Our findings show both similarities and differences from previous findings in adults, suggesting that the ongoing brain maturation processes and environmental age-dependent experiences in adolescence may affect the developing relation between cognitive and emotional development. These results have implications for better understanding and treating clinical populations demonstrating executive or emotional deficits, specifically during adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Environmental susceptibility for all: A data-driven approach suggests individual differences in domain-general and domain-specific patterns of environmental susceptibility.

How we are influenced by our environment is a fundamental question in developmental science. Theories and empirical research have claimed that some individuals are susceptible to environmental influences and others are much less susceptible. The present study addressed four questions: (1) Is environmental susceptibility a continuous or categorical construct? (2) Is environmental susceptibility unidimensional (i.e., domain general) or multidimensional (i.e., domain specific)? (3) Are there genetic contributions to individual differences in environmental susceptibility? (4) What are the temperamental characteristics of different environmental susceptibility patterns? We used child- and mother-report data from a sample of 11-year-old twins (N = 1,507) and applied a novel data-driven approach to assess an environmental susceptibility space, based on simultaneous associations between multiple environmental exposures (18 measures relating to parenting, parent, peer, and twin relationships) and developmental outcomes (10 measures relating to empathy, prosocial behavior, aggression, and self-esteem). The results suggest that the environmental susceptibility space we assessed is better conceptualized as continuous and multidimensional. Different children showed susceptibility to different contexts and variation in domain-general versus domain-specific patterns. A comparison of distances between monozygotic and dizygotic twins within the space demonstrated genetic contributions. Finally, susceptibility patterns could not be differentiated based on a specific temperament trait, but rather related to temperament profiles.

Personal values and sustained attention as predictors of children's helping behavior in middle childhood.

OBJECTIVE: This study tested the effect of personal values (motivation) and sustained attention (cognitive ability) on children's helping behavior. METHOD: Children (N = 162, age range 8-9 years, mean = 8.81, SD = 0.43) completed value ranking and go/no-go tasks, and their helping behavior was examined. RESULTS: Children who valued self-transcendence over self-enhancement helped more than others. Surprisingly, children's lack of sustained attention was associated with more helping among those who valued self-transcendence over self-enhancement or openness-to-change over conservation values. Valuing both self-transcendence and openness-to-change was also associated with more helping. CONCLUSIONS: Children are more likely to help others if they value self-transcendence and openness to change. Notably, children's tendency to act upon these values may be facilitated (rather than obstructed by) low attention skills.

The empathic personality profile: Using personality characteristics to reveal genetic, environmental, and developmental patterns of adolescents' empathy.

OBJECTIVE: How do genetic and environmental processes affect empathy during early adolescence? This study illuminated this question by examining the aetiology of empathy with the aetiology of other personality characteristics. METHOD: Israeli twin adolescents rated their empathy and personality at ages 11 (N = 1176) and 13 (N = 821) (733 families, 51.4% females). Parents rated adolescents' emotional empathy. Adolescents performed an emotion recognition task, indicating cognitive empathy. RESULTS: Using a cross-validated statistical learning algorithm, this study found emotional and cognitive "empathic personality profiles," which describe and predict self-reported empathy from nuanced Big-Five personality characteristics, or "nuances" (i.e., individual items). These profiles predicted empathy moderately (R2  = 0.17-0.24) and were stable and robust, within each age and between ages. They also predicted empathy in a new sample of older nontwin adolescents (N = 96) and were validated against non-self-report empathy measures. Both emotional and cognitive empathy were predicted by nuances representing positive attitudes toward others, trust, forgiveness, and openness to experiences. Emotional empathy was also predicted by nuances representing anxiousness and negative reactivity. Twin analyses revealed overlapping genetic and environmental influences on empathy and the empathic personality profiles and overlapping environmental influences on empathy-personality change. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates how addressing the complexity of individuals' personalities can inform adolescents' empathy development.

The general psychopathology factor from early to middle childhood: Longitudinal genetic and risk analyses.

Accumulating research suggests the structure of psychopathology is best represented by continuous higher-order dimensions, including a general dimension, "p," and more specific dimensions, for example, externalizing and internalizing factors. Here, we aimed to (a) replicate p in early childhood, (b) examine stability and change of genetic and environmental influences on the psychopathology factors from early to midchildhood, (c) externally validate the factors with key constructs of psychological functioning, and (d) test whether the factors can be predicted by early-life measures (e.g., neonatal complications). Data are based on the Longitudinal Israeli Study of Twins. Mothers reported on pregnancy and neonatal conditions and repeatedly filled in questionnaires on each twin's externalizing and internalizing symptoms from ages 3 to 9. Cognitive ability was assessed in the lab at age 6.5, and personality traits, self-esteem, and life satisfaction were self-reported by the twins at ages 11-13. A bifactor model that included p and externalizing and internalizing factors fit the data best, and associations between p, cognitive ability, and personality were replicated. Longitudinal twin analyses indicated that p is highly heritable (64-73%) with a substantial proportion of the genetic influences stable from age 3. The specific internalizing and externalizing factors (net of p) were also highly heritable. Higher p predicted lower self-esteem at age 11. Early-life measures were not strongly associated with psychopathology. Our results show that p is discernible in early childhood, highly heritable, and prospectively associated with negative outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Changing genetic architecture of body mass index from infancy to early adulthood: an individual based pooled analysis of 25 twin cohorts.

BACKGROUND: Body mass index (BMI) shows strong continuity over childhood and adolescence and high childhood BMI is the strongest predictor of adult obesity. Genetic factors strongly contribute to this continuity, but it is still poorly known how their contribution changes over childhood and adolescence. Thus, we used the genetic twin design to estimate the genetic correlations of BMI from infancy to adulthood and compared them to the genetic correlations of height. METHODS: We pooled individual level data from 25 longitudinal twin cohorts including 38,530 complete twin pairs and having 283,766 longitudinal height and weight measures. The data were analyzed using Cholesky decomposition offering genetic and environmental correlations of BMI and height between all age combinations from 1 to 19 years of age. RESULTS: The genetic correlations of BMI and height were stronger than the trait correlations. For BMI, we found that genetic correlations decreased as the age between the assessments increased, a trend that was especially visible from early to middle childhood. In contrast, for height, the genetic correlations were strong between all ages. Age-to-age correlations between environmental factors shared by co-twins were found for BMI in early childhood but disappeared altogether by middle childhood. For height, shared environmental correlations persisted from infancy to adulthood. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that the genes affecting BMI change over childhood and adolescence leading to decreasing age-to-age genetic correlations. This change is especially visible from early to middle childhood indicating that new genetic factors start to affect BMI in middle childhood. Identifying mediating pathways of these genetic factors can open possibilities for interventions, especially for those children with high genetic predisposition to adult obesity.

The special role of middle childhood in self-control development: Longitudinal and genetic evidence.

Despite the importance of self-control for well-being and adjustment, its development from early childhood to early adolescence has been relatively understudied. We addressed the development of mother-reported self-control in what is likely the largest and longest longitudinal twin study of the topic to this day (N = 1889 individual children with data from at least one of five waves: ages 3, 5, 6.5, 8-9 and 11 years). We examined rank-order change in self-control from early childhood to early adolescence, genetic and environmental contributions to variance in the trait and differential developmental trajectories. The relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to change and stability was also examined. Results point at middle childhood as a period of potential transition and change. During this period the rank-order stability of self-control increases, heritability rates substantially rise, and a cross-over occurs in two of the self-control trajectories. Nonadditive genetic effects contribute to both stability and change in self-control while the nonshared environment contributes mostly to change, with no effect for the shared environment. Our findings suggest that new genetic factors, that emerge around age 6.5 and whose effect on self-control is carried on along development, may partially account for changes in self-control around late middle childhood, and explain the growing stability in the trait approaching early adolescence. We discuss the implications of the special role of middle childhood for self-control development.

Are there positive effects of having a sibling with special needs? Empathy and prosociality of twins of children with non-typical development.

This study examined whether typically developing (TD) twins of non-TD children demonstrate enhanced empathy and prosociality. Of 778 Hebrew-speaking Israeli families who participated in a twin study, 63 were identified to have a non-TD child with a TD twin, and 404 as having both twins TD. TD twins of non-TD children (27% males) were compared to the rest of the cohort of TD children (46% males) on measures of empathy and prosociality. Participants were 11 years old. TD twins of non-TD children scored significantly higher than TD twins of TD children in a measure of cognitive empathy (d = .43). No differences were found in emotional empathy and prosociality. The specificity of the positive effect on cognitive empathy is discussed.

Are Different Individuals Sensitive to Different Environments? Individual Differences in Sensitivity to the Effects of the Parent, Peer and School Environment on Externalizing Behavior and its Genetic and Environmental Etiology.

Externalizing behavior is substantially affected by genetic effects, which are moderated by environmental exposures. However, little is known about whether these moderation effects differ depending on individual characteristics, and whether moderation of environmental effects generalizes across different environmental domains. With a large sample (N = 1,441 individuals) of early adolescent twins (ages 11 and 13), using a longitudinal multi-informant design, we tested interaction effects between negative emotionality and both positive and negative aspects of three key social domains: parents, peers, and schools, on the phenotypic variance as well as the etiology of externalizing. Negative emotionality moderated some of the environmental effects on the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental variance in externalizing, with adolescents at both ends of the negative emotionality distribution showing different patterns of sensitivity to the tested environmental influences. This is the first use of gene-environment interaction twin models to test individual differences in environmental sensitivity, offering a new approach to study such effects.

Sensitivity, but to which environment? Individual differences in sensitivity to parents and peers show domain-specific patterns and a negative genetic correlation.

The idea that individuals differ in their sensitivity to the environment's effects is a cornerstone of developmental science. It has been demonstrated repeatedly, for different kinds of stressors, outcomes, and sensitivity markers. However, almost no empirical work was done to examine whether environmental sensitivity is domain-general (i.e., the same individuals are sensitive to different environmental contexts) or domain-specific (i.e., different individuals are sensitive to different environmental contexts), despite its importance to understanding human development, learning, and behavior. To address this question, phenotypic sensitivity to parents and to peers were compared in 1313 11-year-old Israeli adolescent twins. We found that, (1) our phenotypic markers indeed moderate environmental influences, with a discriminant predictive utility, (2) adolescents who are sensitive to their parents are not necessarily sensitive to their peers, and (3) sensitivity to parents and sensitivity to peers have different etiologies and show a negative genetic correlation, indicating that adolescents carrying genetic markers for sensitivity to parents are less likely to carry genetic markers for sensitivity to peers. These findings suggest that environmental sensitivity shows domain-specific patterns, as different individuals can be sensitive to different environments. We discuss the theoretical, empirical, and practical implications of domain-specificity of environmental sensitivity.

Parents' Perceptions of Infants' Nighttime Sleep Patterns Predict Mothers' Negativity: A Longitudinal Study.

OBJECTIVE: Infants' sleeping patterns can influence parents' sleep and their well-being. Infants' sleeping problems can evoke negative emotions from their parents because of the influence the problems have on parents' lives. However, little is known regarding the associations between infants' night sleep patterns and parents' overall negativity toward their children. The objective of this study was to study this association. METHODS: In a longitudinal design, we followed infants and their parents from 9 to 18 months. Overall, 392 families participated in the study. Parents' negativity and children's sleeping patterns were assessed with questionnaires. RESULTS: Parents' negativity and children's sleeping problems showed moderate continuity through the study's 9-month period. Children's sleeping problems at 9 months predicted an increase in mothers' (but not fathers') negativity at 18 months. Parents' negativity was not associated with infants' sleep problems. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that already in infancy, children's tendencies, in this case sleep, can evoke negative emotions in their mothers and highlight infants' roles in the intricate parent-child relationship.

The genetic and environmental origins of emotional and cognitive empathy: Review and meta-analyses of twin studies.

Empathy is considered a cornerstone of human social experience, and as such has been widely investigated from psychological and neuroscientific approaches. To better understand the factors influencing individual differences in empathy, we reviewed and meta-analyzed the behavioral genetic literature of emotional empathy- sharing others' emotions (k=13), and cognitive empathy- understanding others' emotions (k = 15), as manifested in twin studies. Results showed that emotional empathy is more heritable, 48.3 % [41.3 %-50.6 %], than cognitive empathy, 26.9 % [18.1 %-35.8 %]. Moreover, cognitive empathy as examined by performance tests was affected by the environment shared by family members, 11.9 % [2.6 %-21.0 %], suggesting that emotional understanding is influenced, to some degree, by environmental factors that have similar effects on family members beyond their genetic relatedness. The effects of participants' age and the method used to asses empathy on the etiology of empathy were also examined. These findings have implications for understanding how individual differences in empathy are formed. After discussing these implications, we suggest theoretical and methodological future research directions that could potentially elucidate the relations between genes, brain, and empathy.

Genetic and environmental influences on human height from infancy through adulthood at different levels of parental education.

Genetic factors explain a major proportion of human height variation, but differences in mean stature have also been found between socio-economic categories suggesting a possible effect of environment. By utilizing a classical twin design which allows decomposing the variation of height into genetic and environmental components, we tested the hypothesis that environmental variation in height is greater in offspring of lower educated parents. Twin data from 29 cohorts including 65,978 complete twin pairs with information on height at ages 1 to 69 years and on parental education were pooled allowing the analyses at different ages and in three geographic-cultural regions (Europe, North America and Australia, and East Asia). Parental education mostly showed a positive association with offspring height, with significant associations in mid-childhood and from adolescence onwards. In variance decomposition modeling, the genetic and environmental variance components of height did not show a consistent relation to parental education. A random-effects meta-regression analysis of the aggregate-level data showed a trend towards greater shared environmental variation of height in low parental education families. In conclusion, in our very large dataset from twin cohorts around the globe, these results provide only weak evidence for the study hypothesis.

Beyond culture and the family: Evidence from twin studies on the genetic and environmental contribution to values.

Human values are abstract goals, affecting decisions, choices and behavior (Schwartz, 1992). Despite much value research, there is a lack of research on the etiology of values, specifically potential genetic influences. We therefore reviewed all published twin studies on human values, classified as representing four higher order values across two bipolar dimensions: Self-transcendence versus Self-enhancement and Openness to change versus Conservation. Across most studies, and most values, monozygotic twins correlated more strongly than dizygotic twins, indicating genetic contribution to values. Significant heritability estimates ranged from 24.5 to 85.7%. The effects of the environment shared by family members were generally weaker. Finally, there was a contribution of the non-shared environment for all values. After discussing the implications for the neuropsychological research on values, we suggest several future research directions, which may help guide the future science of the etiology of values. We also discuss the possible discrepancy between our findings and theory and research on value socialization and discuss the interplay of genes and the environment in the development of values.

The Longitudinal Israeli Study of Twins (LIST) Reaches Adolescence: Genetic and Environmental Pathways to Social, Personality and Moral Development.

The Longitudinal Israeli Study of Twins (LIST) focuses on the developmental, genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in children's and adolescents' social behavior. Key variables have been empathy, prosocial behavior, temperament and values. Another major goal of LIST has been to study gene-environment correlations, mainly concerning parenting. LIST includes 1657 families of Hebrew-speaking Israeli twins who have participated at least once in the study. Children's environment and their development are assessed in a multivariate, multimethod fashion, including observed, parent-reported and self-reported data. The current article summarizes and updates recent findings from LIST. For example, LIST provided evidence for the heritability of human values with the youngest sample to date, and the first genetic investigation of adolescents' identity formation. Finally, future aims of LIST are discussed.

The Motivational Aspect of Children's Delayed Gratification: Values and Decision Making in Middle Childhood.

Delayed gratification is the ability to postpone an immediate gain in favor of greater and later reward. Although delayed gratification has been studied extensively, little is known about the motivation behind children's decisions. Since values are cognitive representations of individuals' motivations, which serve to guide behavior, we studied the relationship between children's values and delayed gratification. Two main distinct motivations overlapping with values may underlie this decision: conservation - the desire to reduce uncertainty and preserve the status quo, and self-enhancement - the desire to maximize resources and profit for the self. Accordingly, we hypothesized that conservation values would relate to children's preference to hold on to what is given as soon as possible, and that self-enhancement values would relate to children's preference for delaying gratification. Seven-year old children (N = 205) ranked their values with the Picture-Based Values Survey (Döring et al., 2010) as part of the Longitudinal Israeli Study of Twins (LIST) (Avinun and Knafo, 2013). The children also played a decision-making animation game that included delayed gratification decisions. In support of our hypotheses, greater delayed gratification related negatively to conservation values, specifically to security and tradition, and related positively to self-enhancement values, especially power and achievement. This is one of the first demonstrations that children's values relate meaningfully to their behaviors.

A longitudinal genetically informed analysis of parental negativity and children's negative emotionality in middle childhood.

Children's negative emotionality (NE) is frequently associated with parental negativity, but causal understanding of this relationship is limited. In addition, little is known about how genetic and environmental factors affect this relationship during middle childhood. We addressed these gaps by applying a quantitative genetic analysis to cross-lagged associations between mothers' and fathers' parental negativity and children's NE during middle childhood. The sample comprised of 456 families when the children were 6.5 years old, and 401 families when the children were 8/9 years old. Mothers' and fathers' negativity and children's NE were assessed using questionnaires. Results showed that variation in parental negativity was mainly accounted for by the environment shared by children, with some indication of an evocative effect of the children's genes on mothers, but not fathers. Children's NE was accounted for by both genetic and shared environmental influences. Parental negativity and children's NE had moderate continuity over the course of two years. Mothers' (but not fathers') negativity when the children were 6.5 years old predicted change in children's NE (rated by the same or the other parent) toward age 8/9 years, but not the other way around. Shared environmental influences were the main contributor to the association between earlier mothers' negativity and later children's NE. Thus, although children's NE was partially heritable, and parenting too was partially accounted for by children's genes, the association between parental negativity and children's NE, at this age, reflects environmental effects and is compatible with mothers' influence on children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Shared Environment Effects on Children's Emotion Recognition.

Empathy is relevant to many psychiatric conditions. Empathy involves the natural ability to perceive and be sensitive to the emotional states of others. Thus, emotion recognition (ER) abilities are key to understanding empathy. Despite the importance of ER to normal and abnormal social interactions, little is known about how it develops throughout childhood. We examined genetic and environmental influences on children's ER via facial and vocal cues in 344 7-year-old twin children [59 monozygotic (MZ) and 113 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) pairs], who were part of the Longitudinal Israeli Study of Twins. ER was assessed with the child version of the Diagnostic Assessment of Nonverbal Accuracy. For both facial and vocal cues of emotion, twin correlations were not higher for MZ twins than for DZ twins, suggesting no heritability for ER in this population. In contrast, correlations were positive for both types of twins, indicating a shared environmental effect. This was supported by a bivariate genetic analysis. This pattern was robust to controlling for twins being of the same sex and age. Effects remained after controlling for background variables such as family income and number of additional siblings. The analysis found a shared environmental correlation between facial and vocal ER (r c = .63), indicating that the shared environmental factors contributed to the overlap between vocal and facial ER. The study highlights the importance of the shared environment to children's ER.

Parental Education and Genetics of BMI from Infancy to Old Age: A Pooled Analysis of 29 Twin Cohorts.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to analyze how parental education modifies the genetic and environmental variances of BMI from infancy to old age in three geographic-cultural regions. METHODS: A pooled sample of 29 cohorts including 143,499 twin individuals with information on parental education and BMI from age 1 to 79 years (299,201 BMI measures) was analyzed by genetic twin modeling. RESULTS: Until 4 years of age, parental education was not consistently associated with BMI. Thereafter, higher parental education level was associated with lower BMI in males and females. Total and additive genetic variances of BMI were smaller in the offspring of highly educated parents than in those whose parents had low education levels. Especially in North American and Australian children, environmental factors shared by co-twins also contributed to the higher BMI variation in the low education level category. In Europe and East Asia, the associations of parental education with mean BMI and BMI variance were weaker than in North America and Australia. CONCLUSIONS: Lower parental education level is associated with higher mean BMI and larger genetic variance of BMI after early childhood, especially in the obesogenic macro-environment. The interplay among genetic predisposition, childhood social environment, and macro-social context is important for socioeconomic differences in BMI.

Religious Attendance Moderates the Environmental Effect on Prosocial Behavior in Nigerian Adolescents.

There is a growing body of literature linking religious attendance to prosocial behavior (PB). The main purposes of the present study were to estimate genetic and environmental influences on the frequency of religious attendance (FRA) and to explore whether and how FRA moderates genetic and/or environmental influences on PB. As part of the Nigerian Twin and Sibling Study, 2860 (280 monozygotic male, 417 monozygotic female, 544 dizygotic male, 699 dizygotic female, and 920 opposite-sex dizygotic) twins (mean age = 14.2 years; SD = 1.7 years; age range = 12-18 years) completed a questionnaire regarding FRA and a PB scale. Similar to the findings from western twin samples, FRA showed substantial shared environmental influences of 74% (95% CI = 69%, 78%), with absence of genetic effects. The phenotypic correlation between FRA and PB was modest but positive and significant (r = .12; p < .01), suggesting that PB is higher among more frequent attenders than among less frequent attenders. The results of gene-environment (G × E) interaction model-fitting analysis revealed that FRA changed individual environmental experiences rather than genetic effects on PB such that while genetic variance was stable, non-shared environmental variance declined, leading the total phenotypic variance of PB to decrease with increasing levels of religious attendance.