Citation

Riggins-Caspers KM, Cadoret RJ, Knutson JF, Langbehn D. Behav. Genet. 2003; 33(3): 205-220.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 42242, USA. kristin-caspers@uiowa.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

12837013

Abstract

Using an adoption paradigm, the Bioecological Model of development proposed by Bronfenbrenner and Ceci in 1994 was tested by concurrently modeling for biology-environment interaction and evocative biology-environment correlation. A sample of 150 adult adoptees (ages, 18-45 years) provided retrospective reports of harsh adoptive parent discipline, which served as the environmental independent variables. Birth parent psychopathology served as the biological predictor. The dependent variables were retrospective adoptee and adoptive parent reports on adolescent aggressive and conduct-disordered behaviors. Finally, adoptees were classified as experiencing contextual environmental risk using the presence of two or more adverse factors in the adoptive home (e.g., adoptive parent psychopathology) as the cutoff. The contextual environment was found to moderate the biological process of evocative biology-environment correlation, providing empirical support for the Bronfenbrenner and Ceci (1994) Bioecological Model.

Language: en