We know that genes play a role in how well children do in school, but there are gaps in our knowledge: is this the same for different topics in school? And can this be explained largely by intelligence, or do other genetic factors contribute?
A recent paper in Nature Scientific Reports conducted a large-scale study on twins and unrelated people, finding that genes contribute to success in the full range of subjects from maths to art—and that the genetic influence stuck around even after they factored out the effects of intelligence. Other genetic, inherited traits might include mental health, personality, or motivation.
Twin studies are used widely in behavioural genetics, because they remain one of the best methods we have to tease apart the effects of genes and environment. Both identical twins and non-identical twins share an environment, but identical twins have a more similar genome than their non-identical counterparts. If identical twins show greater similarity in some regard—like school results—than non-identical twins, we can infer that genes are responsible for some of the variation on that behaviour.
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