Pleiotropy across academic subjects at the end of compulsory education

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Research has shown that genes play an important role in educational achievement. A key question is the extent to which the same genes affect different academic subjects before and after controlling for general intelligence. The present study investigated genetic and environmental influences on, and links between, the various subjects of the age-16 UK-wide standardized GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examination results for 12,632 twins. Using the twin method that compares identical and non-identical twins, we found that all GCSE subjects were substantially heritable, and that various academic subjects correlated substantially both phenotypically and genetically, even after controlling for intelligence. Further evidence for pleiotropy in academic achievement was found using a method based directly on DNA from unrelated individuals. We conclude that performance differences for all subjects are highly heritable at the end of compulsory education and that many of the same genes affect different subjects independent of intelligence.

Related collections

Most cited references 21

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Genetics and intelligence differences: five special findings

R. Plomin, I Deary (2014)

Intelligence is a core construct in differential psychology and behavioural genetics, and should be so in cognitive neuroscience. It is one of the best predictors of important life outcomes such as education, occupation, mental and physical health and illness, and mortality. Intelligence is one of the most heritable behavioural traits. Here, we highlight five genetic findings that are special to intelligence differences and that have important implications for its genetic architecture and for gene-hunting expeditions. (i) The heritability of intelligence increases from about 20% in infancy to perhaps 80% in later adulthood. (ii) Intelligence captures genetic effects on diverse cognitive and learning abilities, which correlate phenotypically about 0.30 on average but correlate genetically about 0.60 or higher. (iii) Assortative mating is greater for intelligence (spouse correlations ~0.40) than for other behavioural traits such as personality and psychopathology (~0.10) or physical traits such as height and weight (~0.20). Assortative mating pumps additive genetic variance into the population every generation, contributing to the high narrow heritability (additive genetic variance) of intelligence. (iv) Unlike psychiatric disorders, intelligence is normally distributed with a positive end of exceptional performance that is a model for ‘positive genetics'. (v) Intelligence is associated with education and social class and broadens the causal perspectives on how these three inter-correlated variables contribute to social mobility, and health, illness and mortality differences. These five findings arose primarily from twin studies. They are being confirmed by the first new quantitative genetic technique in a century—Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA)—which estimates genetic influence using genome-wide genotypes in large samples of unrelated individuals. Comparing GCTA results to the results of twin studies reveals important insights into the genetic architecture of intelligence that are relevant to attempts to narrow the ‘missing heritability' gap.

0 comments Cited 214 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

The Denver developmental screening test.

William Frankenburg, Josiah Dodds (1967)

0 comments Cited 128 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Genetic foundations of human intelligence.

Ian Deary, W. Johnson, L Houlihan (2009)

Individual differences in intelligence (cognitive abilities) are a prominent aspect of human psychology, and play a substantial role in influencing important life outcomes. Their phenotypic structure-as described by the science of psychometrics-is well understood and well replicated. Approximately half of the variance in a broad range of cognitive abilities is accounted by a general cognitive factor (g), small proportions of cognitive variance are caused by separable broad domains of mental function, and the substantial remainder is caused by variance that is unique to highly specific cognitive skills. The heritability of g is substantial. It increases from a low value in early childhood of about 30%, to well over 50% in adulthood, which continues into old age. Despite this, there is still almost no replicated evidence concerning the individual genes, which have variants that contribute to intelligence differences. Here, we describe the human intelligence phenotype, summarise the evidence for its heritability, provide an overview of and comment on molecular genetic studies, and comment on future progress in the field.

0 comments Cited 120 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Rep

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Rep

Title: Scientific Reports

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group

ISSN (Electronic): 2045-2322

Publication date (Electronic): 23 July 2015

Publication date Collection: 2015

Volume: 5

Electronic Location Identifier: 11713

Affiliations

[1 ]King’s College London, MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience , London, SE5 8AF, UK

[2 ]Goldsmiths, University of London, Department of Psychology , London, SE14 6NW, UK

[3 ]Tomsk State University, Laboratory for Cognitive Investigations and Behavioural Genetics , Tomsk, 634050, Russia

[4 ]University of New Mexico, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences , Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA

Author notes

[a ] kaili.rimfeld@ 123456kcl.ac.uk

Article

Publisher Item ID: srep11713

DOI: 10.1038/srep11713

PMC ID: 4512149

PubMed ID: 26203819

SO-VID: 8856d14b-8fdc-4c68-9761-4f06236dc2eb

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Pleiotropy across academic subjects at the end of compulsory education

Read this article at

Abstract

Related collections

SDG 4: Quality Education

Most cited references 21

Genetics and intelligence differences: five special findings

The Denver developmental screening test.

Genetic foundations of human intelligence.

Author and article information

Journal

Affiliations

Author notes

Article

History

Categories

Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 138

Cited by 19

Most referenced authors 305