Age-to-age change in achievement is largely explained by non-shared environmental factors, while genetic and shared environmental influences are stable¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Non-shared environmental factors account for much of the age-to-age change in achievement, contrasting with stable genetic and shared environmental effects. → Rimfeld 2018

Evidence¶

Rimfeld 2018¶

Rimfeld, K., Malanchini, M., Krapohl, E., Hannigan, L. J., Dale, P. S. & Plomin, R. (2018). The stability of educational achievement across school years is largely explained by genetic factors. npj Science of Learning 3:16. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-018-0030-0

q3 · i? · associational · r3

Discussion of the multivariate twin results; the article attributes age-to-age change largely to non-shared environmental factors and frames the pattern as the rubric "genetic stability, environmental change". No effect size is printed for this specific decomposition.

"We show that age-to-age change in achievement scores was to a large extent explained by non-shared environmental factors. This is another example of the general rubric of behavioral genetics, “genetic stability, environmental change ”."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Genetic factors account for most of the longitudinal stability of educational achievement (70% in the common pathway model; 63–79% of bivariate phenotypic correlations) — related
• A Classical Twin Design model of educational attainment in the TwinLife sample estimates shared environmental influence at 43% and additive genetic influence at 34% — related
• Twin-specific shared environments account for a substantial portion of CTD shared-environment estimates for educational attainment and cannot be interpreted as between-family environmental differences — related
• GPAΔ is strikingly highly heritable (85%), exceeding the heritability of achievement itself (67%) — reports the opposite
• Educational achievement is highly heritable, and the common environmental variance is attributable to SES effects — related
• Educational achievement is highly stable from age 7 to 16, with age-to-age phenotypic correlations ranging from 0.66 to 0.85 — related
• Genetic stability of educational achievement persists after controlling for general cognitive ability (g), with genetic factors explaining about 60% of stability — related
• Educational achievement is highly heritable across school years and subjects, with twin heritability around 60% and SNP heritability around 30% — related