PSYCHOLOGY SLP

1 . Growing Up

As the author of Nature vs . Nurture in Intelligence ' notes researchers have sought to address the relative contributions of genetics and the environment in regards to intelligence ( Nature vs Nurture . Many of these studies have examined intelligence differences in identical twins , as identical twins share the same genetic material Theoretically , differences in intelligence between the twins would have to be explained by environmental factors (ThinkQuest , Research Behavioral Genetics . One such study examined fifty identical twins that had been separated and raised by different families . The researchers found

that the degree of correlation between the separated twins ' intelligence was almost the same as the correlation between twins that had been raised together . These results indicate that genetics have a significant influence on intelligence (ThinkQuest , Examples of Genetic Influences . Studies on the heritability of IQ have also established that there is a 40 correlation between the IQ of parents and children living together ( Nature vs Nurture . This is certainly a strong correlation , but it is not as strong a correlation as what has been found in twin studies because parents and their children share far less genetic material

One modern theory about intelligence concerns the relative weight of genotype and phenotype . Genotype refers to the types of information that are encoded in our genes whereas phenotype refers to the expression of this genetic information in terms of physical , biochemical , and physiological traits (ThinkQuest , Phenotype and Genotype . In this theory , an individual 's potential for intelligence would be determined by...