Longitudinal Twin Study--Early Reading Development

描述(申请人提供)：这项研究将完成首个国际纵向双胞胎研究，从学龄前到幼儿园、一年级和二年级结束时，以及四年级结束时，孩子们“为学而读”，研究遗传和环境对阅读前和早期阅读相关技能的影响。来自注意力、语音意识、快速命名、言语记忆、词汇、语法、形态和印刷知识的学龄前数据被用来形成可靠的综合分数和潜在特征，用于并行和发展行为-遗传分析。在接下来的5年里，我们计划完成对568对双胞胎的阅读和相关技能的跟踪评估，直到二年级结束，并将纵向设计扩展到四年级末，更加重视双胞胎的阅读和听力理解，以及他们的印刷暴露。与双胞胎阅读和语言发展相关的环境措施被包括在内，以帮助识别对共享和非共享环境的影响进行行为遗传估计的具体因素，并确定阅读和语言发展中潜在的重要的基因-环境相关性。科罗拉多州研究的双胞胎数据将与澳大利亚和斯堪的纳维亚半岛平行研究的双胞胎数据进行适当的比较和组合，以更有力地分析阅读和相关技能方面的个体差异和残疾。之前对年龄较大的儿童和成年人进行的双胞胎研究表明，遗传和环境对阅读和相关技能的个体差异和群体缺陷都有很强的影响，但这些影响的发展路径及其对干预的影响还没有被很好地理解。这项从学龄前到四年级的纵向双胞胎研究的完成将为早期阅读发展的关键时期个体差异和残疾的遗传和环境病因提供重要的新证据。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research will complete the first international longitudinal twin study of genetic and environmental influences on pre-reading and early reading-related skills from preschool through the end of kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades, when children "learn to read", and at the end of 4th grade, when children "read to learn." Preschool data from measures of attention, phonological awareness, rapid naming, verbal memory, vocabulary, grammar, morphology, and print knowledge are being used to form reliable composite scores and latent traits for concurrent and developmental behavior-genetic analyses. Over the next 5 years, we propose to complete follow-up assessments of reading and related skills for 568 twin pairs through the end of 2nd grade, and extend the longitudinal design to the end of 4th grade with increased emphasis on the twins' reading and listening comprehension, and on their print exposure. Environmental measures related to the twins' reading and language development are included to help identify specific factors that contribute to behavior-genetic estimates of influences from shared and non-shared environment, and to identify potentially important genotype-environment correlations in reading and language development. The twin data from the Colorado study will be compared and combined where appropriate with twin data from parallel studies in Australia and Scandinavia for more powerful analyses of individual differences and disabilities in reading and related skills. Previous twin research with older children and adults has shown strong genetic and weaker environmental influences on both individual differences and group deficits in reading and related skills, but the developmental pathways for these influences and their implications for intervention are not well understood. Completion of the proposed longitudinal twin study from preschool through the 4th grade will provide important new evidence regarding the genetic and environmental etiology of individual differences and disabilities across this critical period of early reading development.