Research
The Arizona Twin Project is a longitudinal project with multiple waves of data collection to discover new scientific findings.
The project started with twins at 12 months old and has progressed to late middle childhood and early adolescence. Below is a description of past and current waves of data collection:
Arizona Twin Project: The Early Years
The Arizona Twin Project is a longitudinal research study conducted by professors at Arizona State University (Drs. Doane, Davis & Lemery-Chalfant). Some of you have participated since your twins were infants, while others joined more recently. Thank you for your generosity and support of science in Arizona. The first three assessments at twin ages 1, 2, and 5 years of age were telephone interviews with parents. We then received funding from the National Institutes of Health to expand the study and begin home visits. We visited you in your home when the twins were approximately 8, 9, 10, and 11 years of age. With the Covid-19 pandemic, we switched to “virtual” home visits beginning fall 2020. Since then, we have begun our in-person home visits once again and only send vaccinated-masked-and-trained team members to complete the activities with your twins.
The overall purpose of the study is to use the twin method to understand how nature and nurture work together to influence physical and mental health development across childhood and adolescence. In particular, we try to measure children’s sleep and pain really well. Sleep and pain are not well studied in children, and seem to be related to many important health outcomes. You will also recall we measure the stress hormone cortisol that is present in saliva, and for identical twins, we sometimes collect cheek cells with a long cotton swab to look at gene action. The data become much more valuable as we continue to visit the same families across the twins’ development. We have published over 40 scientific papers, and given over 80 presentations at professional conferences based on the Arizona Twin Project.
Arizona Twin Project: New Directions for Adolescent Twins
We are so excited to announce that the National Institutes of Health has decided this study is very important and renewed our grants to study our twin participants in adolescence! We have since launched two new study waves and have been contacting families to schedule new visits with our team.
What’s different? Now that the twins are adolescents, we have developed an Arizona Twin Project App! The app will be used only across the study period, so we can hear directly from each twin rather than their parents in daily diaries. Depending on which study wave twins are participating in, they will either complete app check-ins for a one-week or three-week long period. Through these entries, we will learn about their daily activities, sleep, emotions, stress, support, and electronic media use. What’s in it for the twins? They can earn money daily by completing the app check-ins. The twins can also earn money by completing online surveys.
What’s the same? We will continue to ask parents/caregivers to complete online surveys. And depending on the study, we will ask the twins to wear watches and provide saliva samples. We will ask to visit your home once again to collect the same measures of health – height, weight, grip strength, balance, lung capacity, etc. By repeating these measures across ages, we can see how nature and nurture influence development, and learn how to design interventions to help all children and adolescents develop in healthy ways.
Publications
2023
Rea-Sandin, G., Clifford, S., Doane, L. D., Davis, M. C., Grimm, K. J., Russell, M. T., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2023). Genetic and environmental links between executive functioning and effortful control in middle childhood. Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 152(3), 780–793. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001298
Rea-Sandin, G., Li-Grining, C. P., Causadias, J. M., Doane, L. D., Gonzales, N. A., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2023). Novel measures of family orientation and childhood self-regulation: A genetically informed twin study. Journal of Family Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0001119
Sasser, J., Lecarie, E. K., Lemery-Chalfant, K., Clifford, S., Breitenstein, R. S., Davis, M. C., & Doane, L. D. (2023). Concordance in parent-child and sibling actigraphy-measured sleep: Evidence among early adolescent twins and primary caregivers. Sleep Medicine, 111, 111–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2023.09.014
2022
Lecarie, E. K., Doane, L. D., Clifford, S., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2022). The onset of pubertal development and actigraphy-assessed sleep during middle childhood: Racial, gender, and genetic effects. Sleep health, 8(2), 208–215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2021.12.006
Lecarie, E. K., Doane, L. D., Stroud, C. B., Walter, D., Davis, M. C., Grimm, K. J., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2022). Does stress predict the development of internalizing symptoms in middle childhood? An examination of additive, mediated, and moderated effects of early family stress, daily interpersonal stress, and physiological stress. Developmental psychology, 58(10), 1849–1862. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001400
Rea-Sandin, G., Breitenstein, R.S., Doane, L.D., Vakulskas, E., Valiente, C., & Lemery-Chalftant, K. (2022). Early life socioeconomic differences in associations between childhood sleep and academic performance. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 79, 101392. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2022.101392
2021
Breitenstein, R. S., Doane, L. D., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2021). Children's objective sleep assessed with wrist-based accelerometers: strong heritability of objective quantity and quality unique from parent-reported sleep. Sleep, 44(1), zsaa142. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsaa142
Lewis, C. R., Breitenstein, R. S., Henderson, A., Sowards, H. A., Piras, I. S., Huentelman, M. J., Doane, L. D., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2021). Harsh Parenting Predicts Novel HPA Receptor Gene Methylation and NR3C1 Methylation Predicts Cortisol Daily Slope in Middle Childhood. Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, 41(4), 783–793. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10571-020-00885-4
Miadich, S.A., Breitenstein, R.S., Davis, M.C., Doane, L.D., Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2021). Pediatric recurring pain in the community; The role of children's sleep and internalizing symptoms. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 44 (4), 551-562. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-021-00209-x
Miadich, S.A., Swanson, J., Doane, L.D., Davis, M.C., Iida, M., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2021). Effortful control and health among triads of mothers and twin children: An actor-partner interdependence modeling approach. Journal of Family Psychology. 36 (1), 102-113. doi: 10.1037/fam0000891.
Rea-Sandin, G., Oro, V., Strouse, E., Clifford, S., Wilson, M. N., Shaw, D. S., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2021). Educational attainment polygenic score predicts inhibitory control and academic skills in early and middle childhood. Genes, brain, and behavior, 20(7), e12762. https://doi.org/10.1111/gbb.12762
Valiente, C., Doane, L.D., Clifford, S., Grimm, K.J., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2021). School readiness and achievement in early elementary school: Moderation by students' temperament. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 74, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2021.101265
2020
Clifford, S., Doane, L. D., Breitenstein, R., Grimm, K. J., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2020). Effortful Control Moderates the Relation Between Electronic-Media Use and Objective Sleep Indicators in Childhood. Psychological Science, 31(7), 822–834. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620919432
Lewis, C. R., Sowards, H. A., Huentelman, M. J., Doane, L. D., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2020). Epigenetic differences in inflammation genes of monozygotic twins are related to parent-child emotional availability and health. Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health, 5, 100084. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbih.2020.100084
Miadich, S. A., Shrewsbury, A. M., Doane, L. D., Davis, M. C., Clifford, S., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2020). Children's sleep, impulsivity, and anger: shared genetic etiology and implications for developmental psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 61(10), 1070–1079. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13328
Moore, S. V., Davis, M. C., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2020). Children's physical pain: relations with maternal and paternal pain and prediction from maternal depressive symptoms and hope during infancy. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 25(5), 613–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2019.1659980
Moore, S. V., Lecarie, E. K., Davis, M. C., Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2020). The effectiveness of parental distraction during children's acute pain: The moderating effect of socioeconomic status. European Journal of Pain, 24 (10), 2038-2047. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejp.1653
Rea-Sandin, G., Vasquez-O'Brien, T. C., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2020). The protective role of parent positive personality and emotional availability in toddler problem behavior. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 66 (3), 227-251.
2019
Breitenstein, R. S., Doane, L. D., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2019). Early life socioeconomic status moderates associations between objective sleep and weight-related indicators in middle childhood. Sleep Health, 5(5), 470–478. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2019.04.002
Doane, L. D., Breitenstein, R. S., Beekman, C., Clifford, S., Smith, T. J., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2019). Early Life Socioeconomic Disparities in Children's Sleep: The Mediating Role of the Current Home Environment. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48(1), 56–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0917-3
Lemery-Chalfant, K., Oro, V., Rea-Sandin, G., Miadich, S., Lecarie, E., Clifford, S., Doane, L. D., & Davis, M. C. (2019). Arizona Twin Project: Specificity in Risk and Resilience for Developmental Psychopathology and Health. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 22(6), 681–685. https://doi.org/10.1017/thg.2019.113
Lewis, C. R., Henderson-Smith, A., Breitenstein, R. S., Sowards, H. A., Piras, I. S., Huentelman, M. J., Doane, L. D., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2019). Dopaminergic gene methylation is associated with cognitive performance in a childhood monozygotic twin study. Epigenetics, 14(3), 310–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/15592294.2019.1583032
Miadich, S. A., Doane, L. D., Davis, M. C., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2019). Early parental positive personality and stress: Longitudinal associations with children's sleep. British Journal of Health Psychology, 24(3), 629–650. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.12372
Rea-Sandin, G., Clifford S., Valiente, C., Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2018). Toddler risk and protective characteristics: Common and unique genetic and environmental influences. Social Development, 28 (2), 482-498. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12347
2018
Breitenstein, R. S., Doane, L. D., Clifford, S., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2018). Children's sleep and daytime functioning: Increasing heritability and environmental associations with sibling conflict. Social Development, 27(4), 967–983. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12302