CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 328Child Abuse and TraumaChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentPsychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending

Nature × nurture: Genetic vulnerabilities interact with physical maltreatment to promote conduct problems

Open access
JAFFEE, SARA R., CASPI, AVSHALOM, MOFFITT, TERRIE E., DODGE, KENNETH A., RUTTER, MICHAEL, TAYLOR, ALAN, TULLY, LUCY A.·2005·Development and Psychopathology
DOI 10.1017/s0954579405050042PMC PMC2768347
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Maltreatment places children at risk for psychiatric morbidity, especially conduct problems. However, not all maltreated children develop conduct problems. We tested whether the effect of physical maltreatment on risk for conduct problems was strongest among those who were at high genetic risk for these problems using data from the E-risk Study, a representative cohort of 1,116 5-year-old British twin pairs and their families. Children's conduct problems were ascertained via parent and teacher interviews. Physical maltreatment was ascertained via parent report. Children's genetic risk for conduct problems was estimated as a function of their co-twin's conduct disorder status and the pair's zygosity. The effect of maltreatment on risk for conduct problems was strongest among those at high genetic risk. The experience of maltreatment was associated with an increase of 2% in the probability of a conduct disorder diagnosis among children at low genetic risk for conduct disorder but an increase of 24% among children at high genetic risk. Prediction of behavioral pathology can attain greater accuracy if both pathogenic environments and genetic risk are ascertained. Certain genotypes may promote resistance to trauma. Physically maltreated children whose first-degree relatives engage in antisocial behavior warrant priority for therapeutic intervention. We are grateful to the Study mothers and fathers, the twins, and the twins' teachers for their participation. Our thanks to Robert Plomin for his contributions; to Thomas Achenbach for generous permission to adapt the CBCL; to Tom Price for comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript; to Hallmark Cards for their support; and to members of the E-Risk team for their dedication, hard work, and insights. The E-Risk Study is funded by Medical Research Council Grant G9806489. Terrie Moffitt is a Royal Society–Wolfson Research Merit Award holder.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/s0954579405050042

Cites

77 of 77 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Further research has replicated and extended the finding that parent neglect as well as abuse in conjunction with the polymorphism increases risk for conduct problems and violence.

    “Further research has replicated and extended the finding by noting that parent neglect as well as abuse in conjunction with the polymorphism increase risk for conduct problems and violence (Foley et al. 2004, Jaffee et al. 2005).”

    From Mediators and Mechanisms of Change in Psychotherapy Research (2007) · cites this paper as Jaffee et al. 2005

    The Results report that physical maltreatment interacted with estimated genetic risk to predict conduct problems in five-year-old children. But the Method and Discussion show that genetic risk was inferred from twin status rather than a measured polymorphism, and that maltreatment subtypes could not be compared. The paper therefore does not establish a separate neglect–polymorphism interaction or an increased risk of violence. (LLM, conf=0.89)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • In the E-risk study of 1116 five-year-old British twin pairs, maltreatment was associated with a greater increase in the probability of conduct problems among children with high genetic liability for conduct disorder compared to those with low genetic liability.

    “Maltreatment was found to be associated with a greater increase in the probability of developing conduct problems among children who had a high genetic liability for conduct disorder compared to children who had a low genetic liability (Jaffee et al., 2005).”

    From Human Aggression Across the Lifespan (2011) · cites this paper as Jaffee et al., 2005

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 8

  1. Achenbach TM. Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist/4–18 and 1991 profile. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont Department of Psychiatry; 1991a. [Google Scholar]
  2. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 4th. Washington, DC: Author; 1994. [Google Scholar]
  3. Department of Health. The Children Act. London: HMSO; 1989. [Google Scholar]
  4. Jaffee SR. Family violence and parent psychopathology: Implications for children's socioemotional development and resilience. In: Goldstein S, Brooks R, editors. Handbook of resilience in children. New York: Kluwer; in press. [Google Scholar]
  5. Manly JT, Cicchetti D, Barnett D. The impact of maltreatment on child outcome: An exploration of dimensions within maltreatment. Development and Psychopathology. 1994;6:121–143. [Google Scholar]
  6. Potter LB, Mercy JA. Public health perspective on interpersonal violence among youths in the United States. In: Stoff DM, Breiling J, Maser JD, editors. Handbook of antisocial behavior. New York: Wiley; 1997. pp. 3–11. [Google Scholar]
  7. StataCorp. Stata statistical software: Release 7.0. College Station, TX: Stata Corporation; 2001. [Google Scholar]
  8. Widom CS, Maxfield MG. An update on the “cycle of violence” (NCJ 184894) Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice; 2001. [Google Scholar]

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
JAFFEE, S. R., CASPI, A., MOFFITT, T. E., DODGE, K. A., RUTTER, M., TAYLOR, A., & TULLY, L. A.
Affiliations
  • King's College London (GB)
  • University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
  • Duke University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Development and Psychopathology
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2005-03
Volume
17
Issue
1
Pages
67-84
ISSN
  • 0954-5794 (ISSN-L)
  • 1469-2198
DOI
10.1017/s0954579405050042
PMC
PMC2768347
OpenAlex
W2110622864
Cited by
328
References
77
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 25 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 22 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 17
FWCI
30.86
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 37 d)
Locations
  • Development and Psychopathology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Economic and Social Research Council (L330 25 3002)
  • National Institute on Drug Abuse (K05DA015226)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending
Keywords
physical abuse, child abuse, conduct problems, conduct disorder, genetic risk, gene-environment interaction, twin pairs, zygosity, antisocial behavior, early childhood
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Child, Child Abuse, Child Behavior Disorders, Child Development, Diseases in Twins, Female, Genotype, Humans, Life Change Events, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Risk Factors, Social Environment, Comorbidity, Conduct Disorder, Genetic Predisposition to Disease

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review