Anxiety Intergenerational Transmission: Article Summary Report

This report summarizes the article "The Intergenerational Transmission of Anxiety: A Children-of-Twins Study" by Eley et al. (2015). The study investigated the transmission of anxiety across generations using a twin study design. The research aimed to determine the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors in the development of anxiety. The methodology involved anxiety and neuroticism measures conducted on twin families. The results indicated support for environmental transmission from parents to offspring, but limited evidence for genetic transmission. The study's strengths include its novel approach and large dataset, while limitations include the lack of evidence for genetic transmission and modest differences between twin types. The conclusion highlights the importance of parental behavior and learning in the transmission of anxiety, suggesting that children can develop anxiety by observing their parents' anxious behaviors. The report also includes references to supporting literature.

Running head: SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE
SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE
Introduction:
With the global burden of mental illness, anxiety disorders have emerged as the most
disorders with the occurrence of 30% in the lifetime (Mannironi et al., 2018). The anxiety
disorders are associated with financial status, societal cost and wide array of personal. This paper
aims to provide a summary of the article “The Intergenerational Transmission of Anxiety: A
Children-of-Twins Study” by Eley et al. (2015). This paper will summarize the nature of the
questions that the study was designed to test, methods of the study, results of the study and
comments and reactions.
Summary of the nature of the question:
The study hypothesized that anxiety disorder can be transmitted through intergeneration
and twins can acquire anxiety from their parents. The prime reason behind this nature of the
question is that is one of the most common features of the anxiety disorders is that it can be
transmitted to generation to generations (Eley et al., 2015). Children can develop clinical signs of
anxiety disorders by indirect learning since children can develop the disorder by observing
anxious behaviors in their parents followed by adopting approach these behaviors themselves
(Eley et al., 2015). Therefore, researchers conducted the experimental study for identifying the
genetic route of the anxiety disorder.
Methodology:
Anxiety and neuroticism measures were conducted on 486 dizygotic same-sex twin
families along with 385 monozygotic twin families. Iani et al.(2017) suggested that neuroticism
measure is one of the most suitable means of measuring emotional stability amongst the

2SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE
population. Therefore, it is the most suitable measure for assessing anxiety. Parental anxious
personality was self-reported with the assistance of Karolinska Scales of Personality which
suitable scale for measuring a social aspect of anxiety. On the other hand, the structural equation
modelling program used for assessing genetic measures.
Results of the study:
The result of the study suggested that the models successfully supported direct
environmental transmission of the anxiety as well as neuroticism from the parent to their
adolescents’ offspring. However, there is limited evidence present that supported the hypothesis
of genetic transmission of anxiety from one generation to another generation (Eley et al., 2015).
Anxious parents usually involve in anxious parental practice which impact the development of
the children as a relationship with the primary caregiver is considered as the foundation of the
development and relationship with other individuals (Eley et al., 2015). The anxious parents
usually proved to be more likely to exhibit over-controlling behavior compared to the parents
who have no anxiety, and the anxious parents are proved to be more negative well as controlling
of their offspring. Therefore, the children of anxious parents usually develop anxiety (Hanseeuw
et al., 2019). Combination of depression and fears from adolescence into young adulthood is also
common for the children whose parents are anxious. Therefore, the hypothesis can be used in
future for conducting extended studies.
Comments:
Eley et al. (2015), conducted a study based on the Intergenerational Transmission of
Anxiety which can provide researchers with a road map for measuring the anxiety and emotional
stability of the adolescents based on parental practice and learning behaviors. It will enable

3SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE
health professionals to consider the social factors of the anxiety and role of parents in the
development of anxiety when a patient will seek clinical assistance in the health care setting
(Duvekot et al., 2016). The strength of the study is that it is considered as the first study that
adopted the children-of-twins analysis of the transmission of anxiety from one generation to next
generation and it used a huge data set in order to provide excellent statistical interpretation. The
third strength of the study is that it provided an core replication by considering neuroticism along
with anxiety. Emotional instability is considerably higher amongst population suffering from
anxiety compared to the population with anxiety disorders (Peters, Bowen & Balbuena, 2019). In
this context, it can be said that neuroticism measures is an excellent measure to assess emotional
stability. However, the research contains a range of limitations such as large sample size of the
research which impacted credibility of the research (Golimbet et al., 2018). Modest difference
between in the data of monozygotic families and dizygotic families indicated low credibility of
the research. Moreover, no evidence of genetic transmission was found for children and
adolescents with high anxiety. The direct transmission of the environmental factors exhibited
by researchers but they failed to exhibit the direct effects. In this context, the alternative
approach of the research can be longitudinal analyses using the child of twin analysis so that
genetic transmission can be encountered.
Conclusion:
On a concluding note it can be said that adolescents can develop clinical signs of anxiety
disorders by indirect learning since offspring can develop the disorder by observing anxious
behaviors in their parents.

4SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE
References:
Duvekot, J., Van Der Ende, J., Constantino, J. N., Verhulst, F. C., & Greaves‐Lord, K. (2016).
Symptoms of autism spectrum disorder and anxiety: shared familial transmission and
cross‐assortative mating. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 57(6), 759-769.
Eley, T. C., McAdams, T. A., Rijsdijk, F. V., Lichtenstein, P., Narusyte, J., Reiss, D., ... &
Neiderhiser, J. M. (2015). The intergenerational transmission of anxiety: a children-of-
twins study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 172(7), 630-637.
Golimbet, V. E., Korovaitseva, G. I., Kasparov, S. V., Kondrat’ev, N. V., & Kopylov, F. Y.
(2018). Association between Genes for Inflammatory Factors and Neuroticism, Anxiety,
and Depression in Men with Ischemic Heart Disease. Neuroscience and Behavioral
Physiology, 48(8), 917-923.
Hanseeuw, B. J., Betensky, R. A., Jacobs, H. I., Schultz, A. P., Sepulcre, J., Becker, J. A., ... &
Buckley, R. F. (2019). Association of amyloid and tau with cognition in preclinical
Alzheimer disease: a longitudinal study. JAMA neurology, 76(8), 915-924.
Iani, L., Lauriola, M., Cafaro, V., & Didonna, F. (2017). Dimensions of mindfulness and their
relations with psychological well-being and neuroticism. Mindfulness, 8(3), 664-676.
Mannironi, C., Biundo, A., Rajendran, S., De Vito, F., Saba, L., Caioli, S., ... & Del Vecchio, G.
(2018). miR-135a regulates synaptic transmission and anxiety-like behavior in
amygdala. Molecular neurobiology, 55(4), 3301-3315.
Nilsson, B. M., Holm, G., & Ekselius, L. (2016). Karolinska scales of personality, cognition and
psychotic symptoms in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. Nordic journal
of psychiatry, 70(1), 53-61.

5SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE
Peters, E. M., Bowen, R., & Balbuena, L. (2019). Mood instability and trait anxiety as distinct
components of Eysenckian neuroticism with differential relations to impulsivity and risk
taking. Journal of personality assessment, 1-11.