1. Genetic covariation between theAuthor Recognition Test and reading and verbal abilities: what can we learn from the analysis of high performance?
- Author
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Martin NW, Hansell NK, Wainwright MA, Shekar SN, Medland SE, Bates TC, Burt JS, Martin NG, and Wright MJ
- Subjects
- Adolescent, Adult, Analysis of Variance, Aptitude Tests, Child, Child, Gifted psychology, Epistasis, Genetic genetics, Female, Genotype, Humans, Male, Models, Genetic, Phenotype, Phonetics, Queensland, Siblings psychology, Social Environment, Young Adult, Aptitude, Child, Gifted genetics, Intelligence genetics, Reading, Recognition, Psychology, Twins, Dizygotic genetics, Twins, Monozygotic genetics, Verbal Learning, Vocabulary
- Abstract
The Author Recognition Test (ART) measures print exposure and is a unique predictor of phonological and orthographic processes in reading. In a sample of adolescent and young adult twins and siblings (216 MZ/430 DZ pairs, 307 singletons; aged 11-29 years) ART scores were moderately heritable (67%) and correlated with reading and verbal abilities, with genes largely accounting for the covariance. We also examine whether high (and low) (i.e. 1SD above the mean) represents a quantitative extreme of the normal distribution. Heritability for high ART was of similar magnitude to the full sample, but, a specific genetic factor, independent from both low ART performance and high reading ability, accounted for 53-58% of the variance. This suggests a distinct genetic etiology for high ART ability and we speculate that the specific genetic influence is on orthographical processing, a critical factor in developing word recognition skills.
- Published
- 2009
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