Zhou Quan, Gidziela Agnieszka, Allegrini Andrea G, Cheesman Rosa, Wertz Jasmin, Maxwell Jessye, Plomin Robert, Rimfeld Kaili, Malanchini Margherita
School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
Mol Psychiatry. 2025 Mar;30(3):999-1008. doi: 10.1038/s41380-024-02716-0. Epub 2024 Sep 4.
Academic achievement is partly heritable and highly polygenic. However, genetic effects on academic achievement are not independent of environmental processes. We investigated whether aspects of the family environment mediated genetic effects on academic achievement across development. Our sample included 5151 children who participated in the Twins Early Development Study, as well as their parents and teachers. Data on academic achievement and family environments (parenting, home environments, and geocoded indices of neighbourhood characteristics) were available at ages 7, 9, 12 and 16. We computed educational attainment polygenic scores (PGS) and further separated genetic effects into cognitive and noncognitive PGS. Three core findings emerged. First, aspects of the family environment, but not the wider neighbourhood context, consistently mediated the PGS effects on achievement across development-accounting for up to 34.3% of the total effect. Family characteristics mattered beyond socio-economic status. Second, family environments were more robustly linked to noncognitive PGS effects on academic achievement than cognitive PGS effects. Third, when we investigated whether environmental mediation effects could also be observed when considering differences between siblings, adjusting for family fixed effects, we found that environmental mediation was nearly exclusively observed between families. This is consistent with the proposition that family environmental contexts contribute to academic development via passive gene-environment correlation processes or genetic nurture. Our results show how parents tend to shape environments that foster their children's academic development partly based on their own genetic disposition, particularly towards noncognitive skills, rather than responding to each child's genetic disposition.
学业成就具有部分遗传性且由多个基因共同决定。然而，基因对学业成就的影响并非独立于环境因素。我们研究了家庭环境因素是否在个体发育过程中介导了基因对学业成就的影响。我们的样本包括5151名参与双胞胎早期发育研究的儿童，以及他们的父母和老师。在儿童7岁、9岁、12岁和16岁时，我们获取了他们学业成就和家庭环境（养育方式、家庭环境以及邻里特征的地理编码指数）的数据。我们计算了教育程度多基因分数（PGS），并进一步将基因效应分为认知和非认知PGS。出现了三个核心发现。首先，家庭环境因素，而非更广泛的邻里环境，在个体发育过程中持续介导了PGS对学业成就的影响，其占总效应的比例高达34.3%。家庭特征的重要性超越了社会经济地位。其次，家庭环境与非认知PGS对学业成就的影响之间的联系比与认知PGS的影响更为紧密。第三，当我们研究在考虑兄弟姐妹之间的差异并调整家庭固定效应时，是否也能观察到环境中介效应，我们发现环境中介效应几乎完全在家庭之间观察到。这与以下观点一致，即家庭环境通过被动基因 - 环境关联过程或基因培育促进学业发展。我们的研究结果表明，父母如何倾向于塑造有利于孩子学业发展的环境，部分是基于他们自己的遗传倾向，特别是对非认知技能的遗传倾向，而不是对每个孩子的遗传倾向做出反应。
