Eric Turkheimer
Biographic Data
| ID | 169451 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eric Turkheimer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eric |
| FAMILY NAME | Turkheimer |
| SIGNATURE | TURKHEIMER E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Virginia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3493-6398 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 174 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Nonlinear decline in the association between birth weight and cognitive ability from infancy to midlife in a community sample of twins
These findings suggest that prenatal experiences may have lasting effects on cognitive development across the lifespan, supporting developmental origin models of cognitive ability
Co-recovery of physical size and cognitive ability from infancy to adolescence: A twin study
This study tested phenotypic and biometric associations between physical and cognitive catch-up growth in a community sample of twins (n = 1285, 51.8% female, 89.3% White). Height and weight were measured at up to 17 time points between birth and 15 years, and cognitive ability was assessed at up to 16 time points between 3 months and 15 years. Weight and length at birth were positively associated with cognitive abilities in infancy and adolescen…
How to Diagnose Abhorrent Science
What makes certain scientific research controversial? And when does scientific research go beyond being merely controversial to be something far worse? We propose a diagnostic framework for distinguishing between scientific research that is merely controversial and that which is abhorrent. Our framework places research projects along two axes of a value‐harm map. Most research, fortunately, is both valuable and harmless. However, research may be …
Wrestling with Social and Behavioral Genomics: Risks, Potential Benefits, and Ethical Responsibility
In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and poten…
Race, Ethnicity, and the Scarr-Rowe Hypothesis: A Cautionary Example of Fringe Science Entering the Mainstream
In 2020, Pesta et al. published an article entitled “Racial and Ethnic Group Differences in the Heritability of Intelligence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” in the journal Intelligence. The authors framed their analysis as an examination of the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis, which holds that the heritability of intelligence varies as a function of socioeconomic status. Pesta et al. concluded that the heritability of intelligence does not differ a…
Socioeconomic status impacts genetic influences on the longitudinal dynamic relationship between temperament and general cognitive ability in childhood: The Louisville Twin Study
The current analysis investigates genetic and environmental influences on the bidirectional relationships between temperament and general cognitive ability (GCA). Measures of GCA and three temperament factors (persistence, approach, and reactivity) were collected from 486 children ages 4–9 years (80% white, 50% female) from the Louisville Twin Study from 1976 to 1998. The results indicated a bidirectional dynamic model of temperament influencing …
Genetically informed, multilevel analysis of the Flynn Effect across four decades and three Wisc versions
This study investigated the systematic rise in cognitive ability scores over generations, known as the Flynn Effect, across middle childhood and early adolescence (7–15 years; 291 monozygotic pairs, 298 dizygotic pairs; 89% White). Leveraging the unique structure of the Louisville Twin Study (longitudinal data collected continuously from 1957 to 1999 using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children [WISC], WISC–R, and WISC–III ed.), multilevel …
The pillars of health: Influence of multiple lifestyle behaviors on body mass index and depressive symptoms in adult twins
Achievement of commonly endorsed health behaviors is associated with lower BMI (especially sedentary and MVPA targets) and depressive symptoms score (especially sedentary and smoking targets). This provides further support of health behavior promotion to improve health outcomes
Three legs of the missing heritability problem
Genetic and environmental correlates of the nonlinear recovery of cognitive ability in Twins
Twins regularly score nearly a standard deviation below the population mean on standardized measures of cognitive development in infancy but recover to the population mean by early childhood, making rapid gains through the toddler years. To date, only polynomial growth models have been fit to model cognitive recovery across childhood, limiting the applicability of the growth parameters to later developmental periods. We fit a nonlinear asymptotic…
Across the great divide: Pluralism and the hunt for missing heritability
Galton's Quincunx: Probabilistic causation in developmental behavior genetics
The Social Science Blues
At the dawn of the new century, Robert Plomin was gloomy. As he recounts in Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, attempts to find the DNA responsible for the heritability of behavior failed. Month after month, journals would report new findings of specific genes for behavioral phenotypes, but they never replicated. One amazing genomic methodology after another was developed in biological genetics and applied to medicine, where it succeeded, an…
Midlife risk factors for late-life cognitive decline
Flynn, the Age-Table Method, and a metatheory of intelligence
A Twin Study on Perceived Stress, Depressive Symptoms, and Marriage
Marriage is associated with reductions in both perceived stress and depressive symptoms, two constructs found to be influenced by common genetic effects. A study of sibling twins was used to test whether marriage decreases the proportion of variance in depressive symptoms accounted for by genetic and environmental effects underlying perceived stress. The sample consisted of 1,612 male and female twin pairs from the University of Washington Twin R…
Genetic Prediction
The fundamental reason that the genetics of behavior has remained so controversial for so long is that the layer of theory between data and their interpretation is thicker and more opaque than in more established areas of science. The finding that variations in tiny snippets of DNA have small but detectable relations to variation in behavior surprises no one, at least no one who was paying attention to the twin studies. How such snippets of DNA a…
Access to green space, physical activity and mental health: A twin study
BACKGROUND: Increasing global urbanisation has resulted in a greater proportion of the world's population becoming exposed to risk factors unique to urban areas, and understanding these effects on public health is essential. The aim of this study was to examine the association between access to green space and mental health among adult twin pairs. METHODS: We used a multilevel random intercept model of same-sex twin pairs (4338 individuals) from …
Self-Reported Personality Pathology Has Complex Structure and Imposing Simple Structure Degrades Test Information
Although simple structure is often used as a theoretical guideline for rotation of exploratory factor structures, its empirical foundation is sometimes not investigated. We examined the degree of simple structure in 2 self-report inventories advocated for the description of personality pathology. The multivariate complexity of the inventories was compared against simulated factorial solutions with increasing degrees of simple structure. Results r…
Stepping towards causation in studies of neighborhood and environmental effects: How twin research can overcome problems of selection and reverse causation
Critical Need for Family-Based, Quasi-Experimental Designs in Integrating Genetic and Social Science Research
Researchers have identified environmental risks that predict subsequent psychological and medical problems. Based on these correlational findings, researchers have developed and tested complex developmental models and have examined biological moderating factors (e.g., gene–environment interactions). In this context, we stress the critical need for researchers to use family-based, quasi-experimental designs when trying to integrate genetic and soc…
Approach temperament, anger, and evaluation: Resolving a paradox
Factor analytic investigations into the structure of naturalistically observed self-reported mood suggest that anger loads together with avoidance temperament markers, such as fear and anxiety. However, when anger is examined following experimental manipulation, it appears to relate more to approach temperament markers, such as determined and active. We explored 1 potential reason why there is a discrepancy between naturalistically collected self…
Intelligence: New findings and theoretical developments.
Peer network drinking predicts increased alcohol use from adolescence to early adulthood after controlling for genetic and shared environmental selection
Research consistently links adolescents' and young adults' drinking with their peers' alcohol intake. In interpreting this correlation, 2 essential questions are often overlooked. First, which peers are more important, best friends or broader social networks? Second, do peers cause increased drinking, or do young people select friends whose drinking habits match their own? The present study combines social network analyses with family (twin and s…
Genetics and human agency: Comment on Dar-Nimrod and Heine (2011)
Dar-Nimrod and Heine (2011) decried genetic essentialism without denying the importance of genetics in the genesis of human behavior, and although I agree on both counts, a deeper issue remains unaddressed: how should we adjust our cognitions about our own behavior in light of genetic influence, or is it perhaps not necessary to take genetics into account at all? I suggest that the genetics of behavior does have important implications for how we …
A genetically informed study of the processes underlying the association between parental marital instability and offspring adjustment
Parental divorce is associated with problematic offspring adjustment, but the relation may be due to shared genetic or environmental factors. One way to test for these confounds is to study offspring of twins discordant for divorce. The current analyses used this design to separate the mechanisms responsible for the association between parental divorce, experienced either before or after the age of 16, and offspring well-being. The results were c…
Peer network drinking predicts increased alcohol use from adolescence to early adulthood after controlling for genetic and shared environmental selection
Research consistently links adolescents' and young adults' drinking with their peers' alcohol intake. In interpreting this correlation, 2 essential questions are often overlooked. First, which peers are more important, best friends or broader social networks? Second, do peers cause increased drinking, or do young people select friends whose drinking habits match their own? The present study combines social network analyses with family (twin and s…
Rethinking Timing of First Sex and Delinquency
Access to green space, physical activity and mental health: A twin study
BACKGROUND: Increasing global urbanisation has resulted in a greater proportion of the world's population becoming exposed to risk factors unique to urban areas, and understanding these effects on public health is essential. The aim of this study was to examine the association between access to green space and mental health among adult twin pairs. METHODS: We used a multilevel random intercept model of same-sex twin pairs (4338 individuals) from …
Family structure and age at menarche: A children-of-twins approach
Girls who grow up in households with an unrelated adult male reach menarche earlier than peers, a finding hypothesized to be an evolutionary strategy for families under stress. The authors tested the alternative hypothesis that nonrandom selection into stepfathering due to shared environmental and/or genetic predispositions creates a spurious relation between stepfathering and early menarche. Using the unique controls for genetic and shared envir…
Perceptions of people with personality disorders based on thin slices of behavior
Critical Need for Family-Based, Quasi-Experimental Designs in Integrating Genetic and Social Science Research
Researchers have identified environmental risks that predict subsequent psychological and medical problems. Based on these correlational findings, researchers have developed and tested complex developmental models and have examined biological moderating factors (e.g., gene–environment interactions). In this context, we stress the critical need for researchers to use family-based, quasi-experimental designs when trying to integrate genetic and soc…
A Genetically Informed Study of the Intergenerational Transmission of Marital Instability
Environmental or genetic influences, or both could account for the increased risk of divorce among the offspring of separated parents. Previous studies have used covariates to statistically control for confounds, but the present research is the first genetically informed study of the topic. The investigation used the Children of Twins Design with twins, their spouses, and their young adult offspring (n = 2,310) from the Australian Twin Registry t…
Personality and the derogation of others: Descriptions based on self- and peer report
Individual differences and the canalization of human behavior
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Being liked is more than having a good personality: The role of matching
Mixed impressions: Reactions of strangers to people with pathological personality traits
Across the great divide: Pluralism and the hunt for missing heritability
A genetically informed study of associations between family functioning and child psychosocial adjustment
Research has documented associations between family functioning and offspring psychosocial adjustment, but questions remain regarding whether these associations are partly due to confounding genetic factors and other environmental factors. The current study used a genetically informed approach, the Children of Twins design, to explore the associations between family functioning (family conflict, marital quality, and agreement about parenting) and…
A Twin Study on Perceived Stress, Depressive Symptoms, and Marriage
Marriage is associated with reductions in both perceived stress and depressive symptoms, two constructs found to be influenced by common genetic effects. A study of sibling twins was used to test whether marriage decreases the proportion of variance in depressive symptoms accounted for by genetic and environmental effects underlying perceived stress. The sample consisted of 1,612 male and female twin pairs from the University of Washington Twin R…
Stepping towards causation in studies of neighborhood and environmental effects: How twin research can overcome problems of selection and reverse causation
Individual and group differences in adoption studies of IQ
In the last 5 years, the Colorado and Texas adoption projects have replicated and elaborated the findings of the classical adoption studies of this century: IQs of adoptees are more strongly related to the IQs of their biological parents than to measurable characteristics of their adoptive environment. At the same time, several studies from France have demonstrated substantial IQ gains in children adopted from impoverished biological parents to m…
Three legs of the missing heritability problem
Genetic and environmental correlates of the nonlinear recovery of cognitive ability in Twins
Twins regularly score nearly a standard deviation below the population mean on standardized measures of cognitive development in infancy but recover to the population mean by early childhood, making rapid gains through the toddler years. To date, only polynomial growth models have been fit to model cognitive recovery across childhood, limiting the applicability of the growth parameters to later developmental periods. We fit a nonlinear asymptotic…
Galton's Quincunx: Probabilistic causation in developmental behavior genetics
Approach temperament, anger, and evaluation: Resolving a paradox
Factor analytic investigations into the structure of naturalistically observed self-reported mood suggest that anger loads together with avoidance temperament markers, such as fear and anxiety. However, when anger is examined following experimental manipulation, it appears to relate more to approach temperament markers, such as determined and active. We explored 1 potential reason why there is a discrepancy between naturalistically collected self…
Interpersonal perception and personality disorders: Utilization of a thin slice approach
Item selection, evaluation, and simple structure in personality data
Individual differences and the canalization of human behavior
All in-text\treferences\tunderlined\tin\tblue\tare\tlinked\tto\tpublications\ton\tResearchGate, letting you\taccess\tand\tread\tthem\timmediately
Individual and group differences in adoption studies of IQ
In the last 5 years, the Colorado and Texas adoption projects have replicated and elaborated the findings of the classical adoption studies of this century: IQs of adoptees are more strongly related to the IQs of their biological parents than to measurable characteristics of their adoptive environment. At the same time, several studies from France have demonstrated substantial IQ gains in children adopted from impoverished biological parents to m…
Why the gap? Practice and policy in civil commitment hearings
Why the gap? Practice and policy in civil commitment hearings
The failure of civil commitment procedures to meet statutory requirements is one of the more reliable findings in the applied social sciences. Most states now require specific legal procedures and behavioral standards for involuntary hospitalization. Nonetheless, empirical studies have demonstrated that commitment hearings are rarely adversarial and clinical concerns continue to take precedence over legal issues. These findings are analyzed in th…
Multidimensional Representation of Decision-making in Chronic Schizophrenics
We administered all paired comparisons of eight gambling stimuli to samples of inpatient schizophrenics, outpatient schizophrenics, and a comparison group of first-degree relatives. A matrix of pairwise preferences was elicited from each subject, and decomposed into a binary matrix indicating stimulus choice, and an unsigned dissimilarity matrix representing strength of preference. These matrices were analyzed using maximum likelihood multidimens…
Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean
Behavior genetics has demonstrated that genetic variance is an important component of variation for all behavioral outcomes, but variation among families is not. These results have led some critics of behavior genetics to conclude that heritability is so ubiquitous as to have few consequences for scientific understanding of development, while some behavior genetic partisans have concluded that family environment is not an important cause of devel…
Statistical Analysis, Experimental Method, and Causal Inference in Developmental Behavioral Genetics
Nonshared environment: A theoretical, methodological, and quantitative review
Nonshared environment: A theoretical, methodological, and quantitative review
When genetic similarity is controlled, siblings often appear no more alike than individuals selected at random from the population. Since R. Plomin and D. Daniels' seminal 1987 review, it has become widely accepted that the source of this dissimilarity is a variance component called nonshared environment. The authors review the conceptual foundations of nonshared environment, with emphasis on distinctions between components of environmental varia…
Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability of IQ in Young Children
Scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children were analyzed in a sample of 7-year-old twins from the National Collaborative Perinatal Project. A substantial proportion of the twins were raised in families living near or below the poverty level. Biometric analyses were conducted using models allowing for components attributable to the additive effects of genotype, shared environment, and non-shared environment to interact with socioeconom…
Deliberate Self-Harm in a Nonclinical Population: Prevalence and Psychological Correlates
OBJECTIVE: Research on deliberate self-harm (intentionally injuring oneself without suicidal intent) has focused on clinical and forensic populations. Studying only these populations, which typically have serious psychopathology, may lead to inflated estimates of the association between self-harm and psychiatric disorder, as well as of the prevalence of deliberate self-harm. The present study investigated the prevalence and correlates of delibera…
Personality and the derogation of others: Descriptions based on self- and peer report
Perceptions of people with personality disorders based on thin slices of behavior
Meta-perception for pathological personality traits: Do we know when others think that we are difficult
Interpersonal Perception and Pathological Personality Features: Consistency Across Peer Groups
This study investigated the consistency of interpersonal perceptions regarding people who exhibit features of personality disorders. The participants ( N =82) were college students who were assessed for features of personality disorders, using both self‐report and peer nominations at Time 1. Two years later, participants attended four meetings in groups of 7 to 12 people for a total of 2 hours. Group discussions were designed to encourage interac…
Mixed impressions: Reactions of strangers to people with pathological personality traits
Family structure and age at menarche: A children-of-twins approach
Girls who grow up in households with an unrelated adult male reach menarche earlier than peers, a finding hypothesized to be an evolutionary strategy for families under stress. The authors tested the alternative hypothesis that nonrandom selection into stepfathering due to shared environmental and/or genetic predispositions creates a spurious relation between stepfathering and early menarche. Using the unique controls for genetic and shared envir…
A genetically informed study of the processes underlying the association between parental marital instability and offspring adjustment
Parental divorce is associated with problematic offspring adjustment, but the relation may be due to shared genetic or environmental factors. One way to test for these confounds is to study offspring of twins discordant for divorce. The current analyses used this design to separate the mechanisms responsible for the association between parental divorce, experienced either before or after the age of 16, and offspring well-being. The results were c…
Detrimental psychological outcomes associated with early pubertal timing in adolescent girls
Improving Assessment of Personality Disorder Traits Through Social Network Analysis
When assessing personality disorder traits, not all judges make equally valid judgments of all targets. The present study uses social network analysis to investigate factors associated with reliability and validity in peer assessment. Participants were groups of military recruits ( N =809) who acted as both targets and judges in a round‐robin design. Participants completed self‐ and informant versions of the Multisource Assessment of Personality …
Interpersonal perception and personality disorders: Utilization of a thin slice approach
A Genetically Informed Study of the Intergenerational Transmission of Marital Instability
Environmental or genetic influences, or both could account for the increased risk of divorce among the offspring of separated parents. Previous studies have used covariates to statistically control for confounds, but the present research is the first genetically informed study of the topic. The investigation used the Children of Twins Design with twins, their spouses, and their young adult offspring (n = 2,310) from the Australian Twin Registry t…
Regional Analysis of Self‐Reported Personality Disorder Criteria
Building on the theoretical work of Louis Guttman, we propose that the core problem facing research into the multidimensional structure of the personality disorders is not the identification of factorial simple structure but rather detailed characterization of the multivariate configuration of the diagnostic criteria. Dimensions rotated to orthogonal or oblique simple structure are but one way out of many to characterize a multivariate map, and t…
Rethinking Timing of First Sex and Delinquency
Personality disorder in social networks: Network position as a marker of interpersonal dysfunction
Psychology (48 works) · Developmental psychology (30 works) · Social Psychology (25 works) · Cognitive Abilities and Testing (22 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Personality (14 works) · Biology (13 works) · Heritability (13 works) · Clinical Psychology (12 works) · Genetics (12 works)