Twins and virtual twins: Do genetic (as well as experiential) factors affect developmental risks?

Reared-apart/reared-together Chinese twins and virtual twins: Evolving research program and general intelligence findings

China's One-Child Policy (1979-2015) limited rural families to two children and urban families to one child. This practice, which led to the abandonment of hundreds of thousands of female infants, is indirectly responsible for the separate placement of infant twins. The availability of this sample launched the first prospective study of these pairs. Participants include families and twins comprising 15 monozygotic (MZA) pairs and 7 dizygotic (DZA) pairs from countries throughout the world. The research program is described, and the initial wave of IQ scores for MZA and DZA twin pairs is examined in the first comprehensive report from this study. The twins' mean age at participation was 9.41 years (SD = 6.36), and their ages ranged from 3.19 to 24.98 years. Informative contrasts with adopted-together Chinese twins and virtual twins (same-age unrelated individuals reared together) highlight shared genetic and environmental effects on intellectual development. Applied directions based on findings from these novel samples are described.

Fullerton Virtual Twin Project: Overview and 2019 Update

Virtual twins (VTs) are defined as same-age unrelated siblings raised together from early infancy. This special class of adoptive siblings replays the rearing situation of twins, absent genetic relatedness. The first such pair was identified and studied in 1990 at the University of Minnesota, leading to the creation of the Fullerton Virtual Twin Study (FVTS) at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) the following year. The registry currently includes 169 VT pairs, mostly children, with new pairs identified on a regular basis. These sibling sets provide a direct estimate of environmental influences on developmental traits and, as such, offer informative comparisons with ordinary monozygotic and dizygotic twins, full siblings and adoptive brothers and sisters. The sample characteristics, assessment battery and findings to date are summarized in this 2019 update.

Twins Reared Apart and Twins in Families: The Findings Behind the Fascination

Dr. Irving I. Gottesman was very creative in applying twin research designs to test hypotheses and predictions about human behavior. Two designs stand out among others: twins reared apart from birth and the twin-family study. I (NS) was inspired to incorporate both of these approaches into my own research programs at California State University, Fullerton. Gottesman's involvement and contributions to reared-apart twin research are described, followed by selected findings from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA), the Fullerton Study of Chinese Twins Reared Apart (CTA), a case report on separated monozygotic (MZ) female twins from South Korea, and doubly exchanged MZ male twin pairs from Colombia, South America. Recent findings from an ongoing twin-family study of social closeness, and future directions, are also presented.