General cognitive ability ( g) is the best behavioural predictor of many educational, social and health outcomes.
In a fifth study, we administered this measure to a large sample of young adult twins and assessed the psychometric and genetic properties of the measure. We present a brief, reliable, valid, and engaging new measure of g, Pathfinder, developed over four studies.
Traditional cognitive assessment is expensive and time-consuming and therefore unsuited to large biobanks consequently, gene discovery studies have had to integrate data from multiple cohorts that differ widely in the quality of measurement of g. A major barrier in identifying the genetics of g is measurement heterogeneity. Given its association with crucial life outcomes, it is essential to understand the genetic and environmental mechanisms that support the development of general cognitive ability ( g). Widespread use of this engaging new measure will advance research not only in genomics but throughout the biological, medical, and behavioural sciences. A polygenic score computed from GWA studies of five cognitive and educational traits accounted for 12% of the variation in g, the strongest DNA-based prediction of g to date. This novel g measure, which also yields reliable verbal and nonverbal scores, correlated substantially with standard measures of g collected at previous ages ( r ranging from 0.42 at age 7 to 0.57 at age 16). In a fifth study, we administered this measure to 4,751 young adults from the Twins Early Development Study.
#GPS PATHFINDER OFFICE BLACK BARS ACROSS MAP SERIES#
In a series of four studies, we created a 15-min (40-item), online, gamified measure of g that is highly reliable (alpha = 0.78 two-week test-retest reliability = 0.88), psychometrically valid and scalable we called this new measure Pathfinder. A major barrier to finding more of this ‘missing heritability’ is assessment––the use of diverse measures across GWA studies as well as time and the cost of assessment. Genome-wide association (GWA) studies have uncovered DNA variants associated with individual differences in general cognitive ability ( g), but these are far from capturing heritability estimates obtained from twin studies.