Genes account for more than IQ
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014 10:19 AM

Psychologists already know that IQ is hereditary and that success in school isn't solely dependent on smarts. However, they didn't know if the traits that cause students to excel in school were also hereditary, until now. A study conducted by the King's College London revealed that traits commonly tied to academic excellence are also hereditary. 

Making the grade
Researchers noted that qualities like confidence and motivation were key to student success in school. To determine if such traits are hereditary, researchers studied more than 11,000 pairs of twins (some identical and some not) at the age of 16 who were living in the U.K. The students and their parents filled out a questionnaire that encompassed 83 different traits. Researchers then compared the questionnaire results to the score students received on the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exam. The test is a national standardized assessment that is a determining factor for whether students get into college (like the SAT or ACT in the U.S.). As such, all U.K. students take the test.

The study results revealed that nine groups of traits were all highly hereditary, as more identical twins were likely to share the traits than nonidentical twins. Furthermore, students who exhibited more of the traits scored higher on their GCSE exams than students who who had fewer of the traits. In fact, researchers pegged 62 percent of the differences in student GCSE scores on genetic traits.

"I think this is going to end up being a really classic paper in the literature," Lee Thompson, psychologist from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who has studied the genetics of cognitive skills and who was not involved in the research, told Science. "It's a really firm foundation from which we can build on."

Results in practice
Because the study indicated that traits tied to success and IQ are hereditary, researchers noted that the information could affect education. In an ideal world, students could learn based on their predisposed traits. For instance, if they naturally learn better through doing hands-on activities, teachers could provide such an education for them. Coordinating an effort to offer customized education is a challenging prospect.

"It's really important to understand why children differ in academic achievement," Kaili Rimfeld, developmental psychologist of King's College London and author of the paper, told Science. "These twin studies show that there's a genetic basis for the differences in how easy or enjoyable children find learning."