Chunk #41 — Results — Question 3: Can the Relationship Between Behavioral Disinhibition and Response Inhibition Be Explained by Shared Genetic Factors?
The main focus of our analysis of this third question was the correlations between the latent genetic and environmental influences on our latent factors. Such correlations should be negative because the direction of the effect in response inhibition (i.e., higher scores represent better task performance) is opposite that in behavioral disinhibition (i.e., higher scores represent greater problem behavior). At age 12, the genetic influences in behavioral disinhibition correlated −.60 with the genetic influences on response inhibition at age 17. Although unique environmental factors accounted for only a small portion of the variance in behavioral disinhibition and response inhibition (14% and 1%, respectively), these environmental factors were somewhat overlapping (rE = .54), though not significantly so. It is important to point out that the correlation (−.44) derived from this model between the behavioral and cognitive factors was almost entirely due to the genetic correlation (−.46=−.60×.59*.99) and only negligibly due to the environmental correlation (.02=.54×.14*.01).
