Five-plus genes
Excellent study: genes decide almost everything
News from Science News: Genes don't just influence your IQ – they determine how well you do in schoolIf you studied well at school and institute, showed good results in exams and easily overcame all the difficulties associated with learning, you can thank a good heredity for this.
The results of a new study involving thousands of pairs of twins demonstrated that academic performance is very significantly influenced, in addition to the level of intelligence, by such individual characteristics as character, level of personal motivation, self-confidence and others. That is, traits largely determined by genes.
Humanity has long noticed that the level of a person's mental abilities is a hereditary factor that is passed down from generation to generation. The results of recent studies have confirmed this folk wisdom: in June 2012, an international group of scientists reported in The Journal of Neuroscience about the identification of an entire genetic network on which IQ depends (Chiang et al., Gene Network Effects on Brain Microstructure and Intellectual Performance Identified in 472 Twins). 24 point mutations were found in six genes. All of them are associated with individual differences in the structure of key signaling pathways in the brain and determine the speed of passage of nerve impulses from one area to another. These structural features of the brain that determine the ability to work with new information, the amount of short-term memory, reaction speed, and so on, that is, everything that is included in the concept of "intelligence", and are inherited.
However, as you know, high IQ and excellent academic performance are far from synonymous. Successful study at school requires a favorable combination of many other personal qualities and to what extent the A's in all subjects depend on the genetic profile of the student, it was still unclear. Trying to understand this subject, researchers from King's College London attracted more than 11 thousand pairs of identical and non-identical twins born in the UK from 1994 to 1996 to participate in their study.
Instead of focusing on the IQ level of the participants, the researchers analyzed 83 different other individual indicators. To do this, 16-year–olds at the time of the study, teenagers and their parents answered a lot of questions of various properties - for example, how happy young people feel, how much they love school, how diligently they do their homework, and so on. The researchers then combined all these data with the results shown by each of the participants during the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exam. The GCSE certificate is an analogue of our certificate of incomplete secondary education. This exam, which includes compulsory subjects – mathematics, English and a science block – is passed by absolutely all British schoolchildren.
As a result, the authors of the study were able to identify eight groups of personal psychological characteristics, which are largely determined by heredity and collectively play no less a role in academic performance than intelligence. We are talking about such traits as self-confidence, emotional balance, characteristics of character and behavior in various circumstances, the level of personal motivation, the ability to concentrate, and so on. The authors estimated the contribution of mental traits obtained with genes to the results of school studies at 62 percent. And together with the IQ level, the genetic basis of excellent academic performance reaches 75 percent.
"The data we have obtained allow us to understand why the academic success of children is so different," the journal Science quotes psychologist Kaili Rimfeld, one of the authors of the work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Krapohla et al., The high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence). "It turns out that genetic factors play a key role in how easily children go through the learning process, and not only the level of intelligence, but also personal characteristics."
Awareness of this fact, Rimfeld stressed, once again indicates the importance of a personalized approach to learning. Ideally, students should go to classes according to their personal characteristics, where they will be taught using completely different techniques, to whom what is more suitable. Someone – with the help of computer programs, and someone - through a game.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru07.10.2014