We examined heritability of error rate on the antisaccade task
among female twin youths. This task appears to be sensitive
to prefrontal functioning, providing a measure of individual
differences in inhibitory control associated with genetic risk
for schizophrenia. The sample consisted of 674 11-year-olds
and 616 17-year-olds, comprising the two cohorts of female twins
from the Minnesota Twin Family Study, a population-based
investigation of substance abuse and related psychopathology.
We used biometric model-fitting methods to determine the relative
magnitude of genetic and environmental influences on performance.
In both age cohorts, the best fitting model contained additive
genes and nonshared environment. Despite substantial age-related
differences in mean performance levels (effect size = .81),
additive genes accounted for greater than half the variance
in performance in both age cohorts. These results are consistent
with the hypothesis that antisaccade error rate might serve
as an endophenotype for behavior disorders reflecting frontal
lobe dysfunction or problems with inhibitory control.