General Anxiety and Reading Achievement as Genetic Sources of Variance in Reading Anxiety

ABSTRACT Reading anxiety is conceptualized as a fear of reading that is correlated with but a separate construct from general anxiety and reading achievement. Using a sample of 408 twin children across the United States in third through ninth grade, we plan to empirically investigate the genetic and environmental factors contributing to individual differences in reading anxiety, and how these factors are accounted for by the major correlates of general anxiety and reading achievement. First, we will use regression modeling to determine the extent to which there is variance unique to reading anxiety that is not explained by reading achievement and general anxiety. Second, we will use twin modeling to determine the extent of the genetic and environmental variance on reading anxiety, after accounting for common genetic and environmental variance shared with general anxiety and reading achievement. The data has already been collected, but none of the analyses have been run.