Individual differences in cognitive traits in children and adults are shaped by a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors. In this seminar, Dr. Bruno Sauce and Dr. Alexandra Starr will share findings from ongoing projects involving large-scale genetic studies that explore how our inherited DNA differences contribute to variation in cognitive and educational outcomes as well as mental health in childhood and adulthood.
The first talk will focus on recent findings from a genome-wide association study of video gaming in 536,000 adults in the UK and Estonia, which identified 52 genetic regions associated with gaming that account for a SNP-based heritability of 6%. The magnitude of this genetic effect was found to vary across age cohorts and countries, with up to ⅓ of the genetic effect being accounted for by family-shared genetic and environmental confounding factors. Combining those with our independent samples from the Netherlands, Germany, and the US, we also found that video gaming has shared biological mechanisms with traits such as IQ, ADHD, autism, gambling and smoking addiction, and the cognitive slice of educational attainment. Findings could give us a better glimpse of gaming as a potential large-scale learning intervention as well as its mental health costs.
The second talk explores the potential of using measured DNA differences to predict why some children might struggle in school. In a study including 16,000 participants from the Netherlands Twin Register, we estimated and contrasted the polygenic scores for reading skills, dyslexia, and years of education in their predictive power regarding children’s literacy and numeracy skills, and adults’ educational attainment. The polygenic score for years of education significantly predicted literacy and numeracy in primary school children as well as educational attainment in adulthood, explaining up to 10.6% of variance. In contrast, polygenic scores for reading skills and dyslexia showed substantially weaker effects. Findings contribute to our understanding of the genetic intertwining between educational outcomes across age cohorts and inform about the potential of polygenic scores for use in education research.