Davis Oliver S P, Haworth Claire M A, Plomin Robert
Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, UK.
Cogn Neuropsychiatry. 2009;14(4-5):312-31. doi: 10.1080/13546800902797106.
The new view of cognitive neuropsychology that considers not just case studies of rare severe disorders but also common disorders, as well as normal variation and quantitative traits, is more amenable to recent advances in molecular genetics, such as genome-wide association studies, and advances in quantitative genetics, such as multivariate genetic analysis. A surprising finding emerging from multivariate quantitative genetic studies across diverse learning abilities is that most genetic influences are shared: they are "generalist", rather than "specialist".
We exploited widespread access to inexpensive and fast Internet connections in the United Kingdom to assess over 5000 pairs of 12-year-old twins from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) on four distinct batteries: reading, mathematics, general cognitive ability (g) and, for the first time, language.
Genetic correlations remain high among all of the measured abilities, with language as highly correlated genetically with g as reading and mathematics.
Despite developmental upheaval, generalist genes remain important into early adolescence, suggesting optimal strategies for molecular genetic studies seeking to identify the genes of small effect that influence learning abilities and disabilities.
认知神经心理学的新观点不仅考虑罕见严重疾病的个案研究，还考虑常见疾病以及正常变异和数量性状，这更符合分子遗传学的最新进展，如全基因组关联研究，以及数量遗传学的进展，如多变量遗传分析。跨多种学习能力的多变量定量遗传研究中出现的一个惊人发现是，大多数遗传影响是共享的：它们是“通才型”，而非“专才型”。
我们利用英国广泛可用的廉价快速互联网连接，对来自双胞胎早期发育研究（TEDS）的5000多对12岁双胞胎进行了四项不同测试：阅读、数学、一般认知能力（g），以及首次纳入的语言测试。
在所有测量能力中，遗传相关性仍然很高，语言在遗传上与g的相关性与阅读和数学一样高。
尽管有发育剧变，通才型基因在青春期早期仍然很重要，这为分子遗传学研究提供了最佳策略，以识别影响学习能力和残疾的小效应基因。
