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Adolescent adjustment measures may be related to each other and to the social environment in various ways. Are these relationships similar in genetic and environmental sources of covariation, or different? A multivariate behaviorgenetic analysis was made of 6 adjustment and 3 treatment composites from the study Nonshared Environment in Adolescent Development, using 674 same-sex adolescent sibling pairs aged 9-11. Cholesky decompositions of the total covariance matrix yielded additive and nonadditive genetic, and shared and nonshared environmental matrices. Factor analyses led to 3 factors for all but shared environment. The first 2 factors resembled Neuroticism and Extraversion factors typically found for personality; the third factor, parental monitoring and control, appeared to have different associations in different matrices.

Argues against the presence of dysgenic trends for IQ on the basis of absence of change in the differences between various groups. Illustrates this with an example of the numbers of children born to Black and to White women at different educational levels. Discusses the effects, mechanisms, and implications of dysgenesis for IQ. (MMU)

In their stimulating article, Nesselroade et al. (Nesselroade, Gerstorf, Hardy, & Ram, this issue) propose "filtering out" idiosyncracy at the measurement level in order to maintain constancy at the construct level. They illustrate their idea using data from a study by Lebo and Nesselroade (1978), in which self-descriptions of individual women over more than 100 days were factored by a variant of P-technique. Nesselroade et al. tested the assumption that the obtained factors, although defined somewhat differently from woman to woman, had the same underlying intercorrelation structure. In this commentary, the author questions what this common structure represent. Is it the structure of personality or the structure of language? He contends that in a way, it is analogous to the much-discussed relation between within-race and between-race differences in intelligence. The two may have different origins: It is, for example, logically possible that within-race variation in IQ mainly reflects the genes, whereas between-race differences in IQ are purely environmental in origin (see Lewontin, 1970). But the fact that within- and between-group differences "may be" different in origin does not establish that they "are" (see Jensen, 1998). By now, there is a considerable psychometric literature addressing how one might approach such a question. Integrating the two areas might provide useful insights into both.

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00536.x Byline: John C. Loehlin (1), Joseph M. Horn (1), Jody L. Ernst (1) Abstract: ABSTRACT Four composite variables concerning life outcomes were derived from a brief mail questionnaire describing 478 adults, now in their 30s and 40s, who had participated as children in the Texas Adoption Project. Responses were obtained from the participants themselves, their parents, and their siblings. MMPI scores of the parental generation were correlated with the adult outcomes of their biologically related and unrelated children. The obtained correlations were low, but for the biological relationships positive parent adjustment went with positive life outcomes of their children, whereas for adoptive relationships the reverse was the case. Favorable MMPI scores from late adolescence were favorably related to adult outcomes, as were favorable personality ratings from childhood. Author Affiliation: (1)The University of Texas at Austin Article note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John C. Loehlin, Psychology Department, University of Texas, 1 University Station A8000, Austin, Texas, 78712-0187. E-mail: loehlin@psy.utexas.edu.