Elsje van Bergen

Bio: Elsje van Bergen is an academic researcher from VU University Amsterdam. The author has contributed to research in topics: Reading (process) & Dyslexia. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 36 publications receiving 1129 citations. Previous affiliations of Elsje van Bergen include University of Oxford & Public Health Research Institute.

Why are home-literacy environment and children’s reading skills associated? What parental skills reveal

Abstract: Associations between home literacy environment and children's reading ability are often assumed to reflect a direct influence. However, heritability could account for the association between parent and child literacy-related measures. We used data from 101 mother/father/child triads to consider the extent to which associations between home literacy and children's reading fluency could be accounted for by parental reading fluency. Although home literacy correlated significantly with children's reading, no variable predicted significant variance after allowing for parental reading, except the number of books in the home. By incorporating measures of heritable parental traits into studies investigating home environment effects, we can start to identify which variables are correlates of parental traits and which might play a causal role in fostering children's development.

A test of motor (not executive) planning in developmental coordination disorder and autism.

Abstract: Grip selection tasks have been used to test "planning" in both autism and developmental coordination disorder (DCD). We differentiate between motor and executive planning and present a modified motor planning task. Participants grasped a cylinder in 1 of 2 orientations before turning it clockwise or anticlockwise. The rotation resulted in a comfortable final posture at the cost of a harder initial reaching action on 50% of trials. We hypothesized that grip selection would be dominated by motoric developmental status. Adults were always biased towards a comfortable end-state with their dominant hand, but occasionally ended uncomfortably with their nondominant hand. Most 9- to 14-year-olds with and without autism also showed this "end-state comfort" bias but only 50% of 5- to 8-year-olds. In contrast, children with DCD were biased towards selecting the simplest initial movement. Our results are best understood in terms of motor planning, with selection of an easier initial grip resulting from poor reach-to-grasp control rather than an executive planning deficit. The absence of differences between autism and controls may reflect the low demand this particular task places on executive planning.

Child and Parental Literacy Levels within Families with a History of Dyslexia.

Abstract: Background: The present study concerns literacy and its underlying cognitive skills in Dutch children who differ in familial risk (FR) for dyslexia. Previous studies with FR-children were inconclusive regarding the performance of FR-children without dyslexia as compared to the controls. Moreover, van Bergen et al. (2011) recently showed that FR-children with and without dyslexia differed in parental reading skills, suggesting that those who go on to develop dyslexia have a higher liability. The current study concerned 1) the comparison of three groups of children at the end of second grade and 2) the intergenerational transfer of reading and its underlying cognitive skills from parent to child. Method: Three groups of children were studied at the end of second grade: FR-dyslexia (n = 42), FR-no-dyslexia (n = 99), and control children (n = 66). Parents and children were measured on naming, phonology, spelling, and word and pseudoword reading. Results: The FR-dyslexia children were severely impaired across all tasks. The FR-no-dyslexia children performed better than the FR-dyslexia children, but still below the level of the controls on all tasks; the only exception was rapid naming (RAN), on which they were as fast as the controls. Focusing on the FR subsample, parental reading and RAN were related to their offspring's reading status. Conclusions: We replicated and extended van Bergen et al.'s study in showing that the FR-children who develop dyslexia are likely to have a higher liability. Both the group comparisons and the parent-child relations highlight the importance of good RAN skills for reading acquisition.

The Netherlands Twin Register: Longitudinal Research Based on Twin and Twin-Family Designs.

Abstract: The Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) is a national register in which twins, multiples and their parents, siblings, spouses and other family members participate. Here we describe the NTR resources that were created from more than 30 years of data collections; the development and maintenance of the newly developed database systems, and the possibilities these resources create for future research. Since the early 1980s, the NTR has enrolled around 120,000 twins and a roughly equal number of their relatives. The majority of twin families have participated in survey studies, and subsamples took part in biomaterial collection (e.g., DNA) and dedicated projects, for example, for neuropsychological, biomarker and behavioral traits. The recruitment into the NTR is all inclusive without any restrictions on enrollment. These resources - the longitudinal phenotyping, the extended pedigree structures and the multigeneration genotyping - allow for future twin-family research that will contribute to gene discovery, causality modeling, and studies of genetic and cultural inheritance.

Investigating the genetic architecture of noncognitive skills using GWAS-by-subtraction.

Abstract: Little is known about the genetic architecture of traits affecting educational attainment other than cognitive ability. We used genomic structural equation modeling and prior genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of educational attainment (n = 1,131,881) and cognitive test performance (n = 257,841) to estimate SNP associations with educational attainment variation that is independent of cognitive ability. We identified 157 genome-wide-significant loci and a polygenic architecture accounting for 57% of genetic variance in educational attainment. Noncognitive genetics were enriched in the same brain tissues and cell types as cognitive performance, but showed different associations with gray-matter brain volumes. Noncognitive genetics were further distinguished by associations with personality traits, less risky behavior and increased risk for certain psychiatric disorders. For socioeconomic success and longevity, noncognitive and cognitive-performance genetics demonstrated associations of similar magnitude. By conducting a GWAS of a phenotype that was not directly measured, we offer a view of genetic architecture of noncognitive skills influencing educational success.

Using Multivariate Statistics

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Human biochemical genetics

Abstract: So far in this course we have dealt entirely with the evolution of characters that are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance at a single locus. There are notes on the course website about gametic disequilibrium and how allele frequencies change at two loci simultaneously, but we didn’t discuss them. In every example we’ve considered we’ve imagined that we could understand something about evolution by examining the evolution of a single gene. That’s the domain of classical population genetics. For the next few weeks we’re going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach we’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery. If you know a little about the history of evolutionary biology, you may know that after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 there was a heated debate between the “biometricians” (e.g., Galton and Pearson) and the “Mendelians” (e.g., de Vries, Correns, Bateson, and Morgan). Biometricians asserted that the really important variation in evolution didn’t follow Mendelian rules. Height, weight, skin color, and similar traits seemed to

The american journal of psychiatry

Abstract: Articles 1278 An Inflammatory Biomarker as a Differential Predictor of Outcome of Depression Treatment With Escitalopram and Nortriptyline Rudolf Uher et. al 1287 Identification and Replication of a Combined Epigenetic and Genetic Biomarker Predicting Suicide and Suicidal Behaviors Jerry Guintivano et. al 1297 Clinical Outcomes and Genome-Wide Association for a Brain Methylation Site in an Antidepressant Pharmacogenetics Study in Mexican Americans Ma-Li Wong et. al