Genetic and Environmental Influences on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test Performance: A Twin/sibling Study
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Chou, Lin-na
Abstract
Objective: The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) is a widely used measurement for assessing executive function and frontal lobe function. Among many psychiatric disorders examined for WCST performance, schizophrenia is the most extensively investigated one and has been found to have impaired performance on the WCST. To help tackle the genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia, the WCST impairment was advocated as an endophenotypic marker of the disease. However, the heritability estimates of the WCST performance were inconsistent. This study aimed to estimate the relative contributions from genetic and environmental factors to the WCST performance, and compare the differences in these contributions among different WCST indexes. ethod: Participants included 397 twins and same-sex sib-pairs, aged from 12 to 16, recruited from 51 junior high schools in Taipei City between 1996 and 1998. A computerized version of the WCST was administered for each subject and its nine indexes were used for subsequent analysis. After pooling DZ twins and non-twin sib-pairs, univariate analysis of structural equation modeling was performed for each WCST index using Mx program.esults: The correlations of the WCST performance scores between MZ and DZ/SP groups were not significantly different. ACE model for each WCST index indicated no genetic influence on the WCST performance. However, the shared environmental influence was significant and ranged from 30% to 38% on Perseverative Errors, Perseverative Responses, Categories Achieved, and Conceptual Level Responses.onclusions: The WCST performance among adolescents was influenced by shared environmental factors, rather than genetic factors. The results have important implications for the utility of WCST as a tool for studying executive function.
Subjects
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)
Twins
Heritability
Executive function
Prefrontal cortex
Type
thesis
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