Genetic and schooling effects on cognitive development and academic achievemen

PRESIDENT’S SYMPOSIUM Human capability: Genes, Environments, and Agency.By many accounts, a mainstream consensus has emerged that the nature versus nurture question rests on the fallacy that genes and experience compete.... [ view full abstract ]

PRESIDENT’S SYMPOSIUM

Human capability: Genes, Environments, and Agency.

By many accounts, a mainstream consensus has emerged that the nature versus nurture question rests on the fallacy that genes and experience compete. According to this view, rather than competing with one another, genes and experience work together. Just in the past year, however, a lively debate has continued in both the professional and public spheres regarding the mutability of intelligence and academic achievement. Skeptics of environmental potency cite highly reproducible findings that shared environmental influences on cognitive phenotypes are small or absent, whereas genetic influences on cognitive phenotypes are moderate or large. Here I present results of some of my group’s recent work in behavioral genetics that highlights the potency of experiential factors on cognitive development and academic achievement. This includes evidence from the Texas Twin Project of schooling effects on highly heritable cognitive phenotypes for which shared environmentality is estimated at zero.