The current pre-registered study focused on disentangling the relationship between genetic and one neural correlate of externalizing behaviors, P3 amplitude from a visual oddball task. This work is informed by the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) model (Kotov et al., 2017), which posits that the comorbidity seen across externalizing disorders can be accounted for by a general liability for externalizing behaviors. The HiTOP model takes an empirically-based approach toward refining our understanding of psychiatric symptoms and proposes that this approach may provide better targets for behavioral genetic and neural research than diagnoses, which have historically been hindered by heterogeneity and reduced reliability, validity, and statistical power (Kotov et al., 2017; Markon, Chmielewski, & Miller, 2011; Perkins, Latzman, & Patrick, 2020).
