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E Kringlen

Publications and source records attributed to E Kringlen.

90 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
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The heritability of common phobic fear: a twin study of a clinical sample.

The aim of this study was to investigate the genetic and environmental contribution to common phobic fears, and to relate the findings to contemporary theories about the etiology of common phobic fears. Self-reported common phobic fear was studied in a treatment sample of 23 monozygotic and 38 same-sex dizygotic twin pairs. Heritability of .47 was observed for common phobic fear of small animals and social fear, and a heritability of .30 in common agoraphobic fear. For common fear of nature phenomena and situational fear, the heritability was 0. The finding that common nature and situational fears were solely caused by environmental factors is in support of learning theory, whereas results for animal, social, and other common phobic fear are in support of an integrative theory of biological preparedness, learning history, and a cognitive style of fearful expectation.

Adult↗
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A twin study of personality disorders.

No twin study has previously investigated the whole range of personality disorders (PDs) recorded by interviews. Based on twin and patient registries, 92 monozygotic (MZ) and 129 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs were interviewed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R Personality Disorders (SCID-II). Observed prevalence rates from a normal population study of more than 2,000 individuals were used in combination with data from the present study to generate statistics assumed to be valid for a normal twin population, and these statistics were used for structural equation modeling. The best-fitting models had a heritability of .60 for PDs generally, .37 for the eccentric (A) cluster, .60 for the emotional (B) cluster, and .62 for the fearful (C) cluster. Among the specific PDs, the heritability appeared to be .79 for narcissistic, .78 for obsessive-compulsive, .69 for borderline, .67 for histrionic, .61 for schizotypal, .57 for dependent, .54 for self-defeating, .29 for schizoid, .28 for paranoid, and .28 for avoidant PDs. The best-fitting models never included shared-in-families environmental effects. However, a model with only shared familial and unique environmental effects could not be ruled out for dependent PD. Shared familial environmental effects may also influence the development of any PD and borderline PD. Passive-aggressive PD did not seem to be affected by genes or family environment at all. The low occurrence of antisocial PD in the twin sample precluded any model for this disorder. PDs seem to be more strongly influenced by genetic effects than almost any axis I disorder, and more than most broad personality dimensions. However, we observed a large variation in heritability among the different PDs, probably partly because of a moderate sample size and low prevalence of the specific disorders.

Adult↗