Reconsidering the heritability of intelligence in adulthood: taking assortative mating and cultural transmission into account.

ABSTRACT: Heritability estimates of general intelligence in adulthood generally range from 75 to 85%, with all heritability due to additive genetic influences, while genetic dominance and shared environmental factors are absent, or too small to be detected. These estimates are derived from studies based on the classical twin design and are based on the assumption of random mating. Yet, considerable positive assortative mating has been reported for general intelligence. Unmodeled assortative mating may lead to biased estimates of the relative magnitude of genetic and environmental factors. To investigate the effects of assortative mating on the estimates of the variance components of intelligence, we employed an extended twin-family design. Psychometric IQ data were available for adult monozygotic an

SUBMITTER: Vinkhuyzen AA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3276760 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature