Abstract
Relatively little is known about the relationship of most personality disorders to executive cognitive functioning despite their associations with frontal cortex activity. Research on genetic influence is lacking for most personality disorders, and research on genetic influences associated with executive cognitive functioning is sparse and mixed. The Florida State Twin Registry was created to conduct a pilot twin study aimed at examining genetic influence on personality disorders and executive cognitive functioning. Measures included structured clinical interviews for symptoms and diagnoses of personality disorders (borderline, histrionic, narcissistic, antisocial, obsessive-compulsive, avoidant, and dependent), depression, substance abuse/dependence, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders. The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Stroop Color-Word Test were administered to assess executive cognitive functioning. Self-report questionnaires were included to assess maladaptive personality traits. Data sharing and future directions for growing the Florida State Twin Registry are discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 958-962 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Twin Research and Human Genetics |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2006 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This article was supported in part by NIMH grant MH067583.
Funding Information:
The FSTR is growing in a new direction in 2006 with the start of a multidisciplinary center grant funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development aimed at examining reading disability. One of the center grant projects entails ascertainment of twins (using the matching criteria noted above) from the Florida’s Progress Monitoring and Reporting Network (PMRN) that contains data on reading and achievement from 300,000 children in Kindergarten through fifth grade in underachieving schools in Florida. Children in the PMRN are racially diverse: approximately 62% are white and approximately 36% are African–American with the remaining children from other racial groups. About 20% of the children are of Hispanic ethnicity. Approximately 124,000 new children enter the database each year, and we hope to identify around 9000 twin pairs over the course of 5 years. Parents of identified twins will be asked for permission to include the twins in the FSTR. This expansion of the FSTR will allow for future data collection opportunities through follow-up assessments with the twins.
