BackgroundCharacteristics of parent‐child interaction (PCI) early in life have been associated with later development in the child. Twin studies can help to disentangle child contributions to parent‐child interaction, for example, by assessing the influence of the child's genetics on his/her social environment, which includes parental behaviour.MethodsInfant twins from a community sample [354 monozygotic (MZ), 268 same‐sex dizygotic (DZ)] were assessed in terms of PCI at age 5 months. We used the classical twin design to map the aetiology of several parent and child PCI scales and their covariation. We investigated the relations between PCI and later parent‐rated child's social communication, language, and autistic traits at ages 2 and 3.ResultsHeritability was below 20% for all the included PCI traits. Unique (nonshared) environmental influences substantially overlapped across several PCI scales, suggesting that idiosyncrasies linked to each session shaped the scoring of several traits in a systematic way. Factor analysis revealed three uncorrelated latent factors, which were conceptualized as ‘child negative affect’, ‘positive affective interaction’, and ‘parent's supportive strategies’. Parents who were rated highly on ‘sensitive responsiveness’ at 5 months tended to rate their offspring higher in terms of socio‐communicative and language development and lower in terms of autistic traits in the second and third years of life.ConclusionsThis study maps the phenotypic and aetiological structure of PCI in early infancy and supports the view that parents' sensitive responsiveness towards their infant is associated with later developmental gains in several domains. We did not find strong evidence of any so‐called evocative genetic effects on parents’ behaviour. We discuss the results considering the general challenge for lab‐based observational PCI measures to capture the richness of parent‐child interaction.

中文翻译：

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5 个月大时的亲子互动：遗传和环境的贡献以及与后期社会交往发展的关联


背景生命早期亲子互动（PCI）的特征与儿童后期的发育有关。双胞胎研究可以帮助理清儿童对亲子互动的贡献，例如，通过评估儿童遗传学对其社会环境（包括父母行为）的影响。方法来自社区样本的婴儿双胞胎[354单卵（MZ）， 268 名同性异卵双胞胎 (DZ)] 在 5 个月大时接受 PCI 评估。我们使用经典的双胞胎设计来绘制几个父母和孩子 PCI 量表的病因及其协变。我们调查了 PCI 与后来父母评价的 2 岁和 3 岁儿童的社交沟通、语言和自闭症特征之间的关系。结果所有包含的 PCI 特征的遗传力均低于 20%。独特的（非共享的）环境影响在多个 PCI 量表中基本上重叠，这表明与每个会话相关的特质以系统的方式影响了多个特征的评分。因素分析揭示了三个不相关的潜在因素，这些因素被概念化为“儿童负面情绪”、“积极情感互动”和“父母的支持策略”。在 5 个月大时对“敏感反应”评价较高的父母倾向于在其后代的社会沟通和语言发展方面给予较高的评价，而在生命第二年和第三年的自闭症特征方面评价较低。结论这项研究绘制了表型和婴儿早期 PCI 的病因学结构，并支持这样的观点：父母对婴儿的敏感反应与后来在多个领域的发育增益有关。我们没有发现任何所谓的遗传对父母行为产生影响的有力证据。 我们讨论了结果，考虑到基于实验室的观察性 PCI 措施在捕捉亲子互动的丰富性方面所面临的普遍挑战。