Oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) variant rs1042778 moderates the influence of family environment on changes in perceived social support over time

Relationships among Problematic Smartphone Use, Mathematics Achievement, Teacher–Student Relationships, and Subjective Well-Being: Results from a Large-Scale Survey in China

This study examined the mediating role of mathematics performance and the moderating role of teacher–student relationships on the effects of problematic smartphone use on students’ subjective well-being. Through probability proportionate to size sampling (PPS), a total of 20,321 fourth graders from a city in central China were invited to complete a paper-based mathematics achievement test and an online questionnaire survey, including demographic information, problematic smartphone use, subjective well-being, and teacher–student relationship scales. The results showed that: after controlling for SES and gender, (1) problematic smartphone use had a direct and negative effect on students’ subjective well-being; (2) mathematics performance partially mediated the effects of problematic smartphone use on students’ subjective well-being; (3) teacher–student relationships moderated the effects of problematic smartphone use on mathematics performance/students’ subjective well-being; (4) with the increase in problematic smartphone use, high teacher–student relationships produced a lower rate of the positive moderating effect than low teacher–student relationships. The implications of this study and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Genetic differential susceptibility to the parent-child relationship quality and the life span development of compassion

The development of compassion for others might be influenced by the social experiences made during childhood and has a genetic component. No research has yet investigated whether the parent-child relationship quality interacts with genetic variation in the oxytocin and dopamine systems in predicting compassion over the life span. In the prospective Young Finns Study (N = 2099, 43.9% men), we examined the interaction between mother-reported emotional warmth and intolerance toward their child assessed in 1980 (age of participants, 3-18 years) and two established genetic risk scores for oxytocin levels and dopamine signaling activity. Dispositional compassion for others was measured with the Temperament and Character Inventory 1997, 2001, and 2012 (age of participants, 20-50 years). We found a gene-environment interaction (p = .031) that remained marginally significant after adjustment for multiple testing. In line with the differential susceptibility hypothesis, only participants who carry alleles associated with low dopamine signaling activity had higher levels of compassion when growing up with emotionally warm parents, whereas they had lower levels of compassion when their parents were emotionally cold. Children's genetic variability in the dopamine system might result in plasticity to early environmental influences that have a long-lasting effect on the development of compassion. However, our findings need replication.

Genes and environments, development and time

A now substantial body of science implicates a dynamic interplay between genetic and environmental variation in the development of individual differences in behavior and health. Such outcomes are affected by molecular, often epigenetic, processes involving gene-environment (G-E) interplay that can influence gene expression. Early environments with exposures to poverty, chronic adversities, and acutely stressful events have been linked to maladaptive development and compromised health and behavior. Genetic differences can impart either enhanced or blunted susceptibility to the effects of such pathogenic environments. However, largely missing from present discourse regarding G-E interplay is the role of time, a "third factor" guiding the emergence of complex developmental endpoints across different scales of time. Trajectories of development increasingly appear best accounted for by a complex, dynamic interchange among the highly linked elements of genes, contexts, and time at multiple scales, including neurobiological (minutes to milliseconds), genomic (hours to minutes), developmental (years and months), and evolutionary (centuries and millennia) time. This special issue of PNAS thus explores time and timing among G-E transactions: The importance of timing and timescales in plasticity and critical periods of brain development; epigenetics and the molecular underpinnings of biologically embedded experience; the encoding of experience across time and biological levels of organization; and gene-regulatory networks in behavior and development and their linkages to neuronal networks. Taken together, the collection of papers offers perspectives on how G-E interplay operates contingently within and against a backdrop of time and timescales.

Parent-child relationship and smartphone use disorder among Chinese adolescents: The mediating role of quality of life and the moderating role of educational level

The present study explored the effect of parent-child relationship on Smartphone Use Disorder (SUD) and the mediating role of quality of life (QOL). In addition, we explored the role of educational level from the developmental psychology perspective. Our results indicate that: (1) parent-child relationship could negatively predict SUD among adolescents; (2) QOL played a partial mediator role in the relationship between parent-child relationship and SUD; (3) As educational level increased from elementary school to middle school to high school, the effect of parent-child relationship on QOL weakened. This study showed that adolescents with good parent-child relationship had a higher QOL thus exhibiting a lower extent of SUD. Moreover, the link between parent-child relationship and SUD weakened as the educational level increased.

The role of oxytocinergic genes in the intergenerational transmission of parent-child relationship qualities

Parenting qualities are known to transmit across generations, but less is known about genetic processes that may modify how strongly parenting quality carries across generations. We examined in prospective data whether oxytocinergic genes of offspring moderate the intergenerational transmission of warm and accepting parent-child relationship qualities. The sample comprised 1167 Finnish parents (G2, 62% female) and their mothers (G1). At the study baseline, G1 mothers (Mage = 38) reported parent-child relationship qualities towards G2 children (age range 3-18). After 28-34 years, G2 offspring reported parent-child relationship qualities towards their own children using the same questionnaire. A cumulative genetic score was computed for G2 by summing up previously identified four alleles associated with non-optimal parenting or social impairments across OXTR (rs1042778, rs2254298, rs53576) and CD38 (rs3796863) genes. Results indicated no interaction effects of G2 cumulative genetic score on the transmission of parent-child relationship qualities. Among single polymorphisms in OXTR, the interaction effects of rs53576 and rs1042778 were found. G1 maternal emotional warmth was associated with higher G2 emotional warmth among G2 participants with the OXTR rs53576 AA/AG genotype, but not among those with the GG genotype. G1 maternal acceptance was associated with higher G2 acceptance among those G2 participants with the OXTR rs1042778 GG/GT genotype, but not among those with the TT genotype. Oxytocinergic genes may influence sensitivity to quality of parent-child relationship, although this needs replication in future studies.