Large, consistent estimates of the heritability of cognitive ability in two entire populations of 11-year-old twins from Scottish mental surveys of 1932 and 1947

B Benyamin, V Wilson, L J Whalley, P M Visscher, I J Deary

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Twin studies provide estimates of genetic and environmental contributions to cognitive ability differences, but could be based on biased samples. Here we report whole-population estimates using twins from unique mental surveys in Scotland. The Scottish Mental Surveys of 1st June 1932 (SMS1932) and 4th June 1947 (SMS1947), respectively, administered the same validated verbal reasoning test to almost everyone born in 1921 or 1936 and attending school in Scotland. There were 572 twin pairs from the SMS1932, and 517 pairs from the SMS1947. Information on zygosity was unavailable. A novel application of a mixture distribution was used to estimate genetic and environmental components of verbal reasoning variation by maximum likelihood. We found consistent heritability (similar to 0.70) and shared environment (similar to 0.21) estimates. The estimates did not change substantially when additional quantitative traits (height and weight) were added in a multivariate analysis. More generally for studies in genetics, the methodological innovation developed here implies that large (national) data collections can provide sufficient information on twin pairs to estimate genetic parameters, even without zygosity.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)525-534
Number of pages10
JournalBehavior Genetics
Volume35
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2005

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • heritability
  • intelligence
  • IQ
  • mixture distribution
  • twins
  • ADULT BODY HEIGHT
  • 8 COUNTRIES
  • INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES
  • INTELLIGENCE
  • CHILDHOOD
  • BMI

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Large, consistent estimates of the heritability of cognitive ability in two entire populations of 11-year-old twins from Scottish mental surveys of 1932 and 1947'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this