title: Generalist genes and cognitive abilities in Chinese twins.
abstract: This study considered how far nonverbal cognitive, language and reading abilities are affected by common genetic influences in a sample of 312 typically developing Chinese twin pairs aged from 3 to 11 years. Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness and orthographic skills, and Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices. Factor analyses on the verbal tasks adjusted for age indicated two factors: Language as the first factor and Reading as the second factor. Univariate genetic analyses indicated that genetic influences were substantial for nonverbal cognitive ability and moderate for language and reading. Multivariate genetic analyses showed that nonverbal cognitive ability, language and reading were influenced by shared genetic origins, although there were specific genetic influences on verbal skills that were distinct from those on nonverbal cognitive ability. This study extends the Generalist Genes Hypothesis to Chinese language and reading skills, suggesting that the general effects of genes could be universal across languages.
authors: Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
authors: Bonnie Wing-Yin
authors: BW
authors: Chow
authors: Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
authors: Connie Suk-Han
authors: CS
authors: Ho
authors: Department of Psychological Studies, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong.
authors: Simpson Wai-Lap
authors: SW
authors: Wong
authors: School of Biomedical Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
authors: Mary M Y
authors: MMY
authors: Waye
authors: Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK.
authors: Dorothy V M
authors: DVM
authors: Bishop
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D044466:Asian People / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008957:Models, Genetic; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011932:Reading; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic; D014825:Vocabulary