ArticleJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2025
Heritability of children's Secure Base Script Knowledge in middle childhood: a twin study with the Attachment Script Assessment.
Article in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It has been retracted, and should not be counted. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- RETRACTION: Heritability of Children's Secure Base Script Knowledge in Middle Childhood: a Twin Study With the Attachment Script Assessment.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
- Retracted
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAre individual differences in attachment security inborn or shaped by the social environment? In infancy and early childhood, the evidence points to a substantial role of the environment, but a large twin study in early adolescence showed considerable heritability. Here we examined the twin heritability of attachment in middle childhood. We hypothesized that in middle childhood some heritability would emerge. Furthermore, we expected a role for cognitive and language abilities in explaining variance in attachment in middle childhood, partly related to the measurement of attachment, and we therefore examined associations with IQ.
methodsThis pre-registered study included 415 same-sex twin pairs (52% girls, 58% monozygotic) between 8 and 11 years old (M = 9.59, SD = 0.79). Participants were recruited from an experimental cohort-sequential study including two age-overlapping longitudinal cohorts. Secure Base Script Knowledge was assessed with the Middle Childhood Attachment Script Assessment . Zygosity of the twins was determined using DNA samples. In the younger cohort, cognitive development was assessed with the Dutch version of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence . In the older cohort, the Dutch version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children was used .
resultsSignificant additive heritability (38%) was found in the absence of a common environment component. This result diverges from findings in infancy and early childhood and aligns with the results in early adolescence.
conclusionsThe gene-environment correlation hypothesis suggesting that older children more actively shape their experiences in social contexts may offer a plausible explanation for the heritability of attachment in middle childhood. In middle childhood this mechanism might tip the balance toward a larger role for additive genetics. Larger longitudinal twin studies are needed to replicate the heritability of attachment after preschool age.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.