Psychology 3228 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Twin Study, Genetic Variation, Heritability

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3228
• Professor: Scott Mac Dougall- Shackleton

Document Summary

Parent offspring correlations have been assumed by sssm as evidence that parenting is important. Cannot dissociate genetic and environmental contributions: shared home, shared genes. Broad sense heritability (heritability was developed in the genetics of agriculture) If monozygotic twins don"t share a trait it is lower in heritability: everything measured in terms of individual differences have very robust heritability scores. Partition variance into effects of: shared genes, shared environments (smallest effect, unique environments. Typically effects of shared environments are tremendously small when effects of genes controlled. Do not indicate a trait is x% genetic. Heritability means the proportion of variance accounted for by genetic variation. Proposes that after genes, next largest factor is peer group, not family (unshared environment may be indicative of peer groups rather than parents) Language learning in immigrants: developing accents (normally accents of peers rather than parents, how we pronounce things varies depending what we experience while growing up.