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On the nature and nurture of intelligence and specific cognitive abilities: the more heritable, the more culture dependent.

Authors :
Kan KJ
Wicherts JM
Dolan CV
van der Maas HL
Source :
Psychological science [Psychol Sci] 2013 Dec; Vol. 24 (12), pp. 2420-8. Date of Electronic Publication: 2013 Oct 08.
Publication Year :
2013

Abstract

To further knowledge concerning the nature and nurture of intelligence, we scrutinized how heritability coefficients vary across specific cognitive abilities both theoretically and empirically. Data from 23 twin studies (combined N = 7,852) showed that (a) in adult samples, culture-loaded subtests tend to demonstrate greater heritability coefficients than do culture-reduced subtests; and (b) in samples of both adults and children, a subtest's proportion of variance shared with general intelligence is a function of its cultural load. These findings require an explanation because they do not follow from mainstream theories of intelligence. The findings are consistent with our hypothesis that heritability coefficients differ across cognitive abilities as a result of differences in the contribution of genotype-environment covariance. The counterintuitive finding that the most heritable abilities are the most culture-dependent abilities sheds a new light on the long-standing nature-nurture debate of intelligence.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1467-9280
Volume :
24
Issue :
12
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
Psychological science
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
24104504
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613493292