Genetic and Environmental Influences on Language Ability in Older Adults: Findings from the Older Australian Twins Study

We used a sub-sample from the Older Australian Twins Study to estimate the heritability of performance on three tests of language ability: Boston Naming Test (BNT), Letter/Phonemic Fluency (FAS) and Category/Semantic Fluency (CFT) Tests. After adjusting for age, sex, education, mood, and global cogn...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavior genetics 2018-05, Vol.48 (3), p.187-197
Main Authors: Lee, T., Thalamuthu, A., Henry, J. D., Trollor, J. N., Ames, D., Wright, M. J., Sachdev, P. S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ability
Aging
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Clinical Psychology
Cognition
Cognitive ability
Environmental aspects
Environmental factors
Fluency
Genetic analysis
Health Psychology
Heritability
Language
Language disorders
Mood
Naming
Neuroimaging
Older people
Original Research
Psychology
Public Health
Twins
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Summary:We used a sub-sample from the Older Australian Twins Study to estimate the heritability of performance on three tests of language ability: Boston Naming Test (BNT), Letter/Phonemic Fluency (FAS) and Category/Semantic Fluency (CFT) Tests. After adjusting for age, sex, education, mood, and global cognition (GC), heritability estimates obtained for the three tests were 0.35, 0.59, and 0.20, respectively. Multivariate analyses showed that the genetic correlation were high for BNT and CFT (0.61), but low for BNT and FAS (0.17), and for FAS and CFT (0.28). Genetic modelling with Cholesky decomposition indicated that the covariation between the three measures could be explained by a common genetic factor. Environmental correlations between the language ability measures were low, and there were considerable specific environmental influences for each measure. Future longitudinal studies with language performance and neuroimaging data can further our understanding of genetic and environmental factors involved in the process of cognitive aging.
ISSN:0001-8244
1573-3297
DOI:10.1007/s10519-018-9897-z