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Nature-Nurture and Intelligence: The Twin and Adoption Studies Agree

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Joseph M. Horn*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA
John C. Loehlin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA
Lee Willerman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA
*
Psychology Department, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

Abstract

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A large-scale adoption study is underway at the University of Texas where IQ test scores are available for over 1200 women who gave up their children for adoption immediately following delivery. The adopted children and their adoptive families are now being located and tested and, if current trends continue, complete data should eventually be available on over 400 families. About half of these families will contain two or more adopted children or both adopted and natural children. At present, data are available for 89 families. The results are consistent with twin data and support a genetic hypothesis. The biological mother-adopted child correlation is 0.37 whereas the adoptive mother-adopted child and adoptive father-adopted child correlations are only 0.22 and 0.04 respectively. There are 59 pairs of unrelated children reared together in this sample and the IQ correlation for these children is only 0.13.

Type
6. Twin Studies in Human Genetics
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Twin Studies 1976