Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 24, Issue 4, Pages 562-568Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0956797612457952
Keywords
cognitive ability; behavioral genetics; cognitive development; genetics
Categories
Funding
- European Research Council [295366] Funding Source: Medline
- Medical Research Council [G19/2(78332), G0500079(73692), G0901245, G0500079, G19/2] Funding Source: Medline
- NICHD NIH HHS [R01 HD044454, HD044454, R01 HD046167, HD046167] Funding Source: Medline
- Wellcome Trust [085475/B/08/Z, 085475/Z/08/Z, WT088984] Funding Source: Medline
- MRC [G0901245, G19/2, G0500079] Funding Source: UKRI
- Medical Research Council [G19/2, G9817803B, G0500079, G0901245] Funding Source: researchfish
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For nearly a century, twin and adoption studies have yielded substantial estimates of heritability for cognitive abilities, although it has proved difficult for genomewide-association studies to identify the genetic variants that account for this heritability (i.e., the missing-heritability problem). However, a new approach, genomewide complex-trait analysis (GCTA), forgoes the identification of individual variants to estimate the total heritability captured by common DNA markers on genotyping arrays. In the same sample of 3,154 pairs of 12-year-old twins, we directly compared twin-study heritability estimates for cognitive abilities (language, verbal, nonverbal, and general) with GCTA estimates captured by 1.7 million DNA markers. We found that DNA markers tagged by the array accounted for .66 of the estimated heritability, reaffirming that cognitive abilities are heritable. Larger sample sizes alone will be sufficient to identify many of the genetic variants that influence cognitive abilities.
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