Advances in Behavioral Genetics Modeling Using Mplus: Applications of Factor Mixture Modeling to Twin Data

This article discusses new latent variable techniques developed by the authors. As an illustration, a new factor mixture model is applied to the monozygotic–dizygotic twin analysis of binary items measuring alcohol-use disorder. In this model, heritability is simultaneously studied with respect to latent class membership and within-class severity dimensions. Different latent classes of individuals are allowed to have different heritability for the severity dimensions. The factor mixture approach appears to have great potential for the genetic analyses of heterogeneous populations. Generalizations for longitudinal data are also outlined.