Parent-offspring resemblance for specific cognitive abilities in two ethnic groups.

Abstract

A LARGE scale study of familial factors in mental ability is in progress in Hawaii and data are being obtained on 15 cognitive variables (Table 1), various environmental indices, and blood group and enzyme systems. After three years of testing, there are now sufficient data (1,490 families; 5,077 individuals) for preliminary genetic analyses. Measures of parent–offspring resemblance for members of the two largest ethnic groups in our sample, Americans of European ancestry (AEA; 739 families) and Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJA; 244 families), are presented here. These measures provide upper-bound estimates for the heritability of performance on the individual tests and factor scores1,2, in addition to a test of the hypothesis3,4 that spatial visualisation ability is influenced by a sex-linked major gene. Relatively small scale studies of parent–offspring resemblance for specific cognitive abilities have been reported for a Caucasian sample5 and a Korean sample6; however, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first comparative study of parent–offspring resemblance for measures of cognitive abilities in two ethnic groups.