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Child Psychology

Van Leeuwen et al. (2008) twin-family study of IQ: results, conclusions and evaluation

  • 2 things to know
  • Component 03

Overview

Recall questions on Van Leeuwen et al.'s findings on genetic influence, cultural transmission and assortative mating, their conclusion, and the evaluation of method, sample, the nature-nurture debate and determinism.

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What is assortative mating, and what did the study find about it?

Numbers

What proportion of the variation in general intelligence did the best-fitting model attribute to genes?

Questions from this subtopic

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  1. 1

    What proportion of the variation in general intelligence did the best-fitting model attribute to genes?

    Model answer

    The model attributed about 67% of the variation in general intelligence to additive genetic factors.

  2. 2

    What did the model conclude about cultural transmission from parents to children?

    Model answer

    There was no significant cultural transmission, meaning that children resembled their parents in intelligence because of the genes they shared rather than because of the intellectual environment the parents created.

  3. 3

    What is assortative mating, and what did the study find about it?

    Model answer

    Assortative mating is the tendency to choose a partner who resembles you on a trait; the spouses' intelligence scores were positively correlated, and the pattern was best explained by partners choosing each other on intelligence itself rather than on social background.

  4. 4

    Why does assortative mating matter when interpreting family resemblance in IQ?

    Model answer

    Because parents who are alike genetically pass on more similar genes, which increases the resemblance between relatives and would inflate estimates of family influence if it were not modelled.

  5. 5

    State the main conclusion of Van Leeuwen et al. (2008).

    Model answer

    Individual differences in general intelligence in childhood are largely genetic in origin, with about two thirds of the variation explained by additive genetic effects and no detectable effect of the home intellectual environment.

  6. 6

    Give one methodological strength of this study.

    Model answer

    Using an extended family rather than twins alone allowed genetic and environmental transmission to be separated statistically, and the standardised matrices test gave an objective, reliable measure for every family member.

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