AUTHOR=Li Zhi , Hygen Beate W. , Widaman Keith F. , Berg-Nielsen Turid S. , Wichstrøm Lars , Belsky Jay 

TITLE=Disorganization, COMT, and Children's Social Behavior: The Norwegian Hypothesis of Legacy of Disorganized Attachment

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=7

YEAR=2016

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01013

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01013

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Why is disorganized attachment associated with punitive-controlling behavior in some, but caregiving-controlling in others? Hygen et al. (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B26">2014</xref>) proposed that variation in the Catechol-O-methyl transferase(<italic>COMT</italic>) Val158Met genotype explains this variation, providing preliminary data to this effect. We offer a conceptual replication, analyzing data on 560 children (males: 275) drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. As predicted, competitive model-fitting indicated that disorganized infants carrying Met alleles engage in more positive behavior and less negative behavior than other children at age 5 and 11, with the reverse true of Val/Val homozygotes, seemingly consistent with caregiving-controlling and punitive-controlling styles, respectively, but only in the case of maternal and not teacher reports, thereby confirmating a relationship-specific hypothesis.</p>