Advanced paternal age (APA) at conception has been linked with autism and schizophrenia in offspring, neurodevelopmental disorders that affect social functioning. The current study explored the effects of paternal age on social development in the general population.
We used multilevel growth modeling to investigate APA effects on socioemotional development from early childhood until adolescence, as measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) sample. We also investigated genetic and environmental underpinnings of the paternal age effects on development, using the Additive genetics, Common environment, unique Environment (ACE) and gene-environment (GxE) models.
In the general population, both very young and advanced paternal ages were associated with altered trajectory of social development (intercept: p = .01; slope: p = .03). No other behavioral domain was affected by either young or advanced age at fatherhood, suggesting specificity of paternal age effects. Increased importance of genetic factors in social development was recorded in the offspring of older but not very young fathers, suggesting distinct underpinnings of the paternal age effects at these two extremes.
Our findings highlight that the APA-related deficits that lead to autism and schizophrenia are likely continuously distributed in the population.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 291. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 April 2026.
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Outputs from Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
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#2
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Altmetric has tracked 34,453,422 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 5,357 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 20.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
