Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

UC Davis

UC Davis Previously Published Works bannerUC Davis

Differential susceptibility to effects of maternal sensitivity? A study of candidate plasticity genes

Abstract

Here we tested whether there was genetic moderation of effects of early maternal sensitivity on social-emotional and cognitive-linguistic development from early childhood onward and whether any detected Gene × Environment interaction effects proved consistent with differential-susceptibility or diathesis-stress models of Person × Environment interaction (N = 695). Two new approaches for evaluating models were employed with 12 candidate genes. Whereas maternal sensitivity proved to be a consistent predictor of child functioning across the primary-school years, candidate genes did not show many main effects, nor did they tend to interact with maternal sensitivity/insensitivity. These findings suggest that the developmental benefits of early sensitive mothering and the costs of insensitive mothering look more similar than different across genetically different children in the current sample. Although acknowledgement of this result is important, it is equally important that the generally null Gene × Environment results reported here not be overgeneralized to other samples, other predictors, other outcomes, and other candidate genes.

Many UC-authored scholarly publications are freely available on this site because of the UC's open access policies. Let us know how this access is important for you.

Main Content
For improved accessibility of PDF content, download the file to your device.
Current View