ArticleJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2016
The opposite end of the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder continuum: genetic and environmental aetiologies of extremely low ADHD traits.
Article in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Are subsyndromal manifestations of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder morbid in children? A systematic qualitative review of the literature with meta-analysis.Psychiatry research · 2019Pooled it
- Assessing the Psychometric Properties of the Child Behaviour Checklist in the ABCD Study.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Sex differences in self-reported attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms in clinical and population-based cohorts.JCPP advances · 2025Article
- Short-Form Video Media Use Is Associated With Greater Inattentive Symptoms in Thai School-Age Children: Insights From a Cross-Sectional Survey.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Gene-environment interaction in ADHD traits: the role of school environment, personality, callousness-unemotional traits and satisfaction with life.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- On the relationship between internet addiction and ADHD symptoms in adults: does the type of online activity matter?BMC public health · 2025Article
- The interaction of ADHD traits and trait anxiety on inhibitory control.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in cultural context II: a comparison of the links between ADHD symptoms and waiting-related responses in Hong Kong and UK.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- Parental rejection in early adolescence predicts a persistent ADHD symptom trajectory across adolescence.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2023Article
- Working memory and reaction time variability mediate the relationship between polygenic risk and ADHD traits in a general population sample.Molecular psychiatry · 2022Article
- Genetics of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2022Article
- Hyperfocus or flow? Attentional strengths in autism spectrum disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Association of etiological factors across the extreme end and continuous variation in disordered eating in female Swedish twins.Psychological medicine · 2021Article
- ADHD: Current Concepts and Treatments in Children and Adolescents.Neuropediatrics · 2020Review
- Redefining phenotypes to advance psychiatric genetics: Implications from hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology.Journal of abnormal psychology · 2020Review
- Assessing the evidence for shared genetic risks across psychiatric disorders and traits.Psychological medicine · 2018Review
- A Key Characteristic of Sex Differences in the Developing Brain: Greater Variability in Brain Structure of Boys than Girls.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2018Article
- ADHD and lifestyle habits in Czech adults, a national sample.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2018Article
- The Social Aptitudes Scale: looking at both "ends" of the social functioning dimension.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2017Article
- Tipping points? Curvilinear associations between activity level and mental development in toddlers.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2017Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundAlthough 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.
methodsIn 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.
resultsLow 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.
conclusionsShared 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.
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