McGue Matt, Christensen Kaare
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 55455, USA.
Exp Aging Res. 2002 Oct-Dec;28(4):435-51. doi: 10.1080/03610730290080416.
To investigate heritable influences on overall level and rate-of-change in cognitive ability, biometric growth models were fit to cognitive data from nearly 1000 Danish twins age 70 years and older. Twins are participants in the ongoing Longitudinal Study of Aging Danish Twins, a cohort-sequential study of twins assessed every 2 years for up to four waves. Cognitive ability was assessed by five brief cognitive tasks: a fluency measure, forward and backward digit span, and immediate and delayed list recall. Model-fitting results indicated that although the overall level of cognitive functioning was highly heritable (h(2) = .76, 95% confidence interval of .68 to .82), the rate of linear change was not (h(2) = .06, 95% confidence interval of .00 to .57). These findings suggest that the search for specific genes might reasonably focus on average level of cognitive performance, whereas specific environmental influences might account for cognitive change.
为了研究遗传因素对认知能力总体水平和变化率的影响，我们将生物统计学增长模型应用于近1000名70岁及以上丹麦双胞胎的认知数据。这些双胞胎参与了正在进行的丹麦双胞胎老龄化纵向研究，这是一项队列序贯研究，每两年对双胞胎进行一次评估，最多评估四轮。认知能力通过五项简短的认知任务进行评估：一项流畅性测量、顺背和倒背数字广度以及即时和延迟列表回忆。模型拟合结果表明，虽然认知功能的总体水平具有高度遗传性（h(2) = 0.76，95%置信区间为0.68至0.82），但线性变化率并非如此（h(2) = 0.06，95%置信区间为0.00至0.57）。这些发现表明，寻找特定基因可能合理地集中在认知表现的平均水平上，而特定的环境影响可能是认知变化的原因。
