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.
BlockJ. B. (1965). Hereditary components in the performance of twins on the WAIS. Louisville, KY: University of Louisville School of Medicine.
2.
CattellR. B. (1971). Abilities: Their structure, growth, and action. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
3.
DickensW. T. (2008, June). What is g?Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Behavior Genetics Association, Louisville, KY.
4.
DickensW. T.FlynnJ. R. (2001). Heritability estimates versus large environmental effects: The IQ paradox resolved. Psychological Review, 108, 346–369.
5.
DolanC. V.HamakerE. L. (2001). Investigating Black–White differences in psychometric IQ: Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses of the WISC-R and K-ABC and a critique of the method of correlated vectors. In ColumbusF. (Ed.), Advances in Psychology Research (Vol. 6, pp. 31–59). Huntington, NY: Nova Science.
6.
FancherR. E. (1996). Pioneers of psychology. New York, NY: Norton.
7.
FriedmanN. P.MiyakeA.YoungS. E.DeFriesJ. C.CorleyR. P.HewittJ. K. (2008). Individual differences in executive functions are almost entirely genetic in origin. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 201–225.
8.
GeorgasJ.vandeVijverF. J. R.WeissL. G.SaklofskeD. H. (2003). A cross-cultural analysis of the WISC-III. In GeorgasJ.WeissL. G.vanF. J. R.Vijver de SaklofskeD. H. (Eds.), Culture and children’s intelligence: Cross-cultural analysis of the WISC-III (pp. 277–314). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Academic Press.
9.
HaworthC. M. A.WrightM. J.LucianoM.MartinN. G.de GeusE. J.van BeijsterveldtC. E. M. . . . PlominR. (2010). The heritability of general cognitive ability increases linearly from childhood to young adulthood. Molecular Psychiatry, 15, 1112–1120.
10.
HoekstraR. A.BartelsM.BoomsmaD. I. (2007). Longitudinal genetic study of verbal and nonverbal IQ from early childhood to young adulthood. Learning and Individual Differences, 17, 97–114.
11.
HornJ. L. (1985). Remodeling old models of intelligence: Gf-Gc theory. In WolmanB. B. (Ed.), Handbook of intelligence (pp. 267–300). New York, NY: Wiley.
12.
JacobsN.GestelS.DeromC.ThieryE.VernonP.DeromR.VlietinckR. (2001). Heritability estimates of intelligence in twins: Effect of chorion type. Behavior Genetics, 31, 209–217.
13.
JensenA. R. (1980). Bias in mental testing. New York, NY: Free Press.
14.
JensenA. R. (1987). The g beyond factor analysis. In RonningR. R.GloverJ. A.ConoleyJ. C.WittJ. C. (Eds.), The influence of cognitive psychology on testing (Vol. 3, pp. 87–142). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
15.
JensenA. R. (1998). The g factor: The science of mental ability. Westport, CT: Praeger.
16.
JensenA. R. (2012). Educational differences. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
17.
JohnsonW.BouchardT. J.Jr.McGueM.SegalN. L.TellegenA.KeyesM.GottesmanI. I. (2007). Genetic and environmental influences on the verbal-perceptual-image rotation (VPR) model of the structure of mental abilities in the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. Intelligence, 35, 542–562.
18.
JohnsonW.PenkeL.SpinathF. M. (2011). Heritability in the era of molecular genetics: Some thoughts for understanding. European Journal of Personality, 25, 254–266.
19.
LaBudaM. C.DeFriesJ. C.FulkerD. W. (1987). Genetic and environmental covariance structures among WISC-R subtests: A twin study. Intelligence, 11, 233–244.
20.
LuoD.PetrillS. A.ThompsonL. A. (1994). An exploration of genetic g: Hierarchical factor analysis of cognitive data from the Western Reserve Twin Project. Intelligence, 18, 335–347.
21.
MackintoshN. J. (1998). IQ and human intelligence. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
22.
OwenD.SinesJ. (1970). Heritability of personality in children. Behavior Genetics, 1, 235–248.
23.
PedersenN. L.PlominR.NesselroadeJ. R.McClearnG. E. (1992). A quantitative genetic analysis of cognitive abilities during the second half of the life span. Psychological Science, 3, 346–353.
24.
PlominR.DeFriesJ. C.McClearnG. E.McGuffinP. (2008). Behavioral genetics. New York, NY: Worth.
25.
RijsdijkF. V.VernonP. A.BoomsmaD. I. (2002). Application of hierarchical genetic models to Raven and WAIS subtests: A Dutch twin study. Behavior Genetics, 32, 199–210.
26.
RosenthalR. (1991). Meta-analytic procedures for social research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
27.
RushtonJ. P.JensenA. R. (2010). The rise and fall of the Flynn Effect as a reason to expect a narrowing of the Black–White IQ gap. Intelligence, 38, 213–219.
28.
ScarrS.McCartneyK. (1983). How people make their own environments: A theory of genotype → environment effects. Child Development, 54, 424–435.
29.
SegalN. L. (1985). Monozygotic and dizygotic twins: A comparative analysis of mental ability profiles. Child Development, 56, 1051–1058.
30.
SpearmanC. E. (1927). The abilities of man: Their nature and measurement. New York, NY: Macmillan.
31.
TambsK.SundetJ. M.MagnusP. (1984). Heritability analysis of the WAIS subtests: A study of twins. Intelligence, 8, 283–293.
32.
van der MaasH. L. J.DolanC. V.GrasmanR. P. P. P.WichertsJ. M.HuizengaH. M.RaijmakersM. E. J. (2006). A dynamical model of general intelligence: The positive manifold of intelligence by mutualism. Psychological Review, 113, 842–861.
33.
WechslerD. (1949). Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children: Manual. New York, NY: Psychological Corp.
34.
WechslerD. (1955). Manual for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. New York, NY: Psychological Corp.
35.
WechslerD. (1974). Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. New York, NY: Psychological Corp.
WechslerD. (2005). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—III: Nederlandse bewerking. Technische handleiding. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Harcourt Assessment B.V.
42.
WilliamsT. (1975). Family resemblance in abilities: The Wechsler scales. Behavior Genetics, 5, 405–409.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
