Validation of the Mind Excessively Wandering Scale and the Relationship of Mind Wandering to Impairment in Adult ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigates excessive mind wandering (MW) in adult ADHD using a new scale: the Mind Excessively Wandering Scale (MEWS). METHOD: Data from two studies of adult ADHD was used in assessing the psychometric properties of the MEWS. Case-control differences in MW, the association with ADHD symptoms, and the contribution to functional impairment were investigated. RESULTS: The MEWS functioned well as a brief measure of excessive MW in adult ADHD, showing good internal consistency (α > .9), and high sensitivity (.9) and specificity (.9) for the ADHD diagnosis, comparable with that of existing ADHD symptom rating scales. Elevated levels of MW were found in adults with ADHD, which contributed to impairment independently of core ADHD symptom dimensions. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest excessive MW is a common co-occurring feature of adult ADHD that has specific implications for the functional impairments experienced. The MEWS has potential utility as a screening tool in clinical practice to assist diagnostic assessment

High loading of polygenic risk for ADHD in children with comorbid aggression

Objective: Although attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is highly heritable, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have not yet identified any common genetic variants that contribute to risk. There is evidence that aggression or conduct disorder in children with ADHD indexes higher genetic loading and clinical severity. The authors examine whether common genetic variants considered en masse as polygenic scores for ADHD are especially enriched in children with comorbid conduct disorder. Method: Polygenic scores derived from an ADHD GWAS meta-analysis were calculated in an independent ADHD sample (452 case subjects, 5,081 comparison subjects). Multivariate logistic regression analyses were employed to compare polygenic scores in the ADHD and comparison groups and test for higher scores in ADHD case subjects with comorbid conduct disorder relative to comparison subjects and relative to those without comorbid conduct disorder. Association with symptom scores was tested using linear regression. Results: Polygenic risk for ADD, derived from the meta-analysis, was higher in the independent ADHD group than in the comparison group. Polygenic score was significantly higher in ADHD case subjects with conduct disorder relative to ADHD case subjects without conduct disorder. ADHD polygenic score showed significant association with comorbid conduct disorder symptoms. This relationship was explained by,the aggression items. Conclusions: Common genetic variation is relevant to ADHD, especially in individuals with comorbid aggression. The findings suggest that the previously published ADHD GWAS meta-analysis contains weak but true associations with common variants, support for which falls below genome-wide significance levels. The findings also highlight the fact that aggression in ADHD indexes genetic as well as clinical severity

Individual differences in newborn visual attention associate with temperament and behavioral difficulties in later childhood

Recently it was shown that individual differences in attention style in infants are associated with childhood effortful control, surgency, and hyperactivity-inattention. Here we investigated whether effortful control, surgency and behavioral problems in childhood can be predicted even earlier, from individual differences in newborns’ average duration of gaze to stimuli. Eighty newborns participated in visual preference and habituation studies. Parents completed questionnaires at follow up (mean age = 7.5 years, SD = 1.0 year). Newborns’ average dwell time was negatively associated with childhood surgency (β = -.25, R2 = .04, p = .02) and total behavioral difficulties (β = -.28, R2 = .05, p = .04) but not with effortful control (β = .03, R2 = .001, p = .76). Individual differences in newborn visual attention significantly associated with individual variation in childhood surgency and behavioral problems, showing that some of the factors responsible for this variation are present at birth

Childhood behaviour problems show the greatest gap between DNA-based and twin heritability

For most complex traits, DNA-based heritability (‘SNP heritability’) is roughly half that of twin-based heritability. A previous report from the Twins Early Development Study suggested that this heritability gap is much greater for childhood behaviour problems than for other domains. If true, this finding is important because SNP heritability, not twin heritability, is the ceiling for genome-wide association studies. With twice the sample size as the previous report, we estimated SNP heritabilities (N up to 4653 unrelated individuals) and compared them with twin heritabilities from the same sample (N up to 4724 twin pairs) for diverse domains of childhood behaviour problems as rated by parents, teachers, and children themselves at ages 12 and 16. For 37 behaviour problem measures, the average twin heritability was 0.52, whereas the average SNP heritability was just 0.06. In contrast, results for cognitive and anthropometric traits were more typical (average twin and SNP heritabilities were 0.58 and 0.28, respectively). Future research should continue to investigate the reasons why SNP heritabilities for childhood behaviour problems are so low compared with twin estimates, and find ways to maximise SNP heritability for genome-wide association studies

Validation of the mind excessively wandering scale and the relationship of mind wandering to impairment in adult ADHD

Objective: This study investigates excessive mind wandering (MW) in adult ADHD using a new scale: the Mind Excessively Wandering Scale (MEWS). Method: Data from two studies of adult ADHD was used in assessing the psychometric properties of the MEWS. Case-control differences in MW, the association with ADHD symptoms, and the contribution to functional impairment were investigated. Results: The MEWS functioned well as a brief measure of excessive MW in adult ADHD, showing good internal consistency (α > .9), and high sensitivity (.9) and specificity (.9) for the ADHD diagnosis, comparable with that of existing ADHD symptom rating scales. Elevated levels of MW were found in adults with ADHD, which contributed to impairment independently of core ADHD symptom dimensions. Conclusion: Findings suggest excessive MW is a common co-occurring feature of adult ADHD that has specific implications for the functional impairments experienced. The MEWS has potential utility as a screening tool in clinical practice to assist diagnostic assessment

Heritability of Intraindividual Mean and Variability of Positive and Negative Affect : Genetic Analysis of Daily Affect Ratings Over a Month

Positive affect (e.g., attentiveness) and negative affect (e.g., upset) fluctuate over time. We examined genetic influences on interindividual differences in the day-to-day variability of affect (i.e., ups and downs) and in average affect over the duration of a month. Once a day, 17-year-old twins in the United Kingdom (N = 447) rated their positive and negative affect online. The mean and standard deviation of each individual’s daily ratings across the month were used as the measures of that individual’s average affect and variability of affect. Analyses revealed that the average of negative affect was significantly heritable (.53), but the average of positive affect was not; instead, the latter showed significant shared environmental influences (.42). Fluctuations across the month were significantly heritable for both negative affect (.54) and positive affect (.34). The findings support the two-factor theory of affect, which posits that positive affect is more situational and negative affect is more dispositional

Genetic and environmental aetiologies of associations between dispositional mindfulness and ADHD traits: a population-based twin study

© The Author(s) 2019. To get additional insight into the phenotype of attentional problems, we examined to what extent genetic and environmental factors explain covariation between lack of dispositional mindfulness and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits in youth, and explored the incremental validity of these constructs in predicting life satisfaction. We used data from a UK population-representative sample of adolescent twins (N = 1092 pairs) on lack of dispositional mindfulness [Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS)], ADHD traits [Conners’ Parent Rating Scale-Revised (CPRS-R): inattentive (INATT) and hyperactivity/impulsivity (HYP/IMP) symptom dimensions] and life satisfaction (Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale). Twin model fitting analyses were conducted. Phenotypic correlations (rp) between MAAS and CPRS-R (INATT: rp = 0.18, HYP/IMP: rp = 0.13) were small, but significant and largely explained by shared genes for INATT (% rp INATT–MAAS due to genes: 93%, genetic correlation rA = 0.37) and HYP/IMP (% rp HYP/IMP–MAAS due to genes: 81%; genetic correlation rA = 0.21) with no significant contribution of environmental factors. MAAS, INATT and HYP/IMP significantly and independently predicted life satisfaction. Lack of dispositional mindfulness, assessed as self-reported perceived lapses of attention (MAAS), taps into an aspect of attentional functioning that is phenotypically and genetically distinct from parent-rated ADHD traits. The clinically relevant incremental validity of both scales implicates that MAAS could be used to explore the underlying mechanisms of an aspect of attentional functioning that uniquely affects life satisfaction and is not captured by DSM-based ADHD scales. Further future research could identify if lack of dispositional mindfulness and high ADHD traits can be targeted by different therapeutic approaches resulting in different effects on life satisfactio

Geelong kindergarten participation rate project

Contains fulltext : 168223.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: Although attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is thought to reflect a continuously distributed quantitative trait, it is assessed through binary diagnosis or skewed measures biased towards its high, symptomatic extreme. A growing trend is to study the positive tail of normally distributed traits, a promising avenue, for example, to study high intelligence to increase power for gene-hunting for intelligence. However, the emergence of such a 'positive genetics' model has been tempered for ADHD due to poor phenotypic resolution at the low extreme. Overcoming this methodological limitation, we conduct the first study to assess the aetiologies of low extreme ADHD traits. METHODS: In a population-representative sample of 2,143 twins, the Strength and Weaknesses of ADHD Symptoms and Normal behaviour (SWAN) questionnaire was used to assess ADHD traits on a continuum from low to high. Aetiological influences on extreme ADHD traits were estimated using DeFries-Fulker extremes analysis. ADHD traits were related to behavioural, cognitive and home environmental outcomes using regression. RESULTS: Low extreme ADHD traits were significantly influenced by shared environmental factors (23-35%) but were not significantly heritable. In contrast, high-extreme ADHD traits showed significant heritability (39-51%) but no shared environmental influences. Compared to individuals with high extreme or with average levels of ADHD traits, individuals with low extreme ADHD traits showed fewer internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems, better cognitive performance and more positive behaviours and positive home environmental outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Shared environmental influences on low extreme ADHD traits may reflect passive gene-environment correlation, which arises because parents provide environments as well as passing on genes. Studying the low extreme opens new avenues to study mechanisms underlying previously neglected positive behaviours. This is different from the current deficit-based model of intervention, but congruent with a population-level approach to improving youth wellbeing