Longitudinal Stability in Reading Comprehension Is Largely Heritable from Grades 1 to 6

PLOS ONE, Dec 2019

Reading comprehension is a foundational academic skill and significant attention has focused on reading development. This report is the first to examine the stability and change in genetic and environmental influences on reading comprehension across Grades 1 to 6. This developmental range is particularly important because it encompasses the timespan in which most children move from learning how to read to using reading for learning. Longitudinal simplex models were fitted separately for two independent twin samples (N = 706; N = 976). Results suggested that the shared environment contributed to variance in early but not later reading. Instead, stability in reading development was largely mediated by continuous genetic influences. Thus, although reading is clearly a learned skill and the environment remains important for reading development, individual differences in reading comprehension appear to be also influenced by a core of genetic stability that persists through the developmental course of reading.

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Longitudinal Stability in Reading Comprehension Is Largely Heritable from Grades 1 to 6

January Longitudinal Stability in Reading Comprehension Is Largely Heritable from Grades 1 to 6 Academic Editor: Benjamin Xu 0 The National Insti- tutes of Health 0 UNITED STATES 0 Brooke Soden 0 Micaela E. Christopher 0 Jacqueline Hulslander 0 Richard K. Olson 0 Laurie Cutting 0 Janice M. Keenan 0 Lee A. Thompson 0 Sally J. Wadsworth 0 Erik G. Willcutt 0 Stephen A. Petrill 0 0 1 Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University , Columbus , Ohio, United States of America, 2 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, United States of America, 3 Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, United States of America, 4 Department of Special Education , Psychology, Radiology, and Pediatrics , Vanderbilt University , Nashville , Tennessee, United States of America, 5 Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States of America, 6 Department of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University , Cleveland, Ohio , United States of America Reading comprehension is a foundational academic skill and significant attention has focused on reading development. This report is the first to examine the stability and change in genetic and environmental influences on reading comprehension across Grades 1 to 6. This developmental range is particularly important because it encompasses the timespan in which most children move from learning how to read to using reading for learning. Longitudinal simplex models were fitted separately for two independent twin samples (N = 706; N = 976). Results suggested that the shared environment contributed to variance in early but not later reading. Instead, stability in reading development was largely mediated by continuous genetic influences. Thus, although reading is clearly a learned skill and the environment remains important for reading development, individual differences in reading comprehension appear to be also influenced by a core of genetic stability that persists through the developmental course of reading. - Data Availability Statement: Data are available to interested persons who meet the criteria for access to confidential data upon approval from the IRBs of each datasets respective institution per the IRB requirements. An interested researcher would need to contact the Primary Investigator for each project (SAP for WRRMP & RKO for ILTS) and apply to the respective institutions human subjects Institutional Review Board (The Ohio State University Office of Responsible Research Practices and University of Colorado Boulder Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research) to start the process to gain access to the data. Reading comprehension, defined as the ability to understand and employ text for learning, is a foundational skill for academic and occupational success. Reading comprehension is clearly a learned skill, subject to differences in instruction and in the environment [1, 2]. Additionally, neurobiological studies suggest that reading comprehension is influenced by individual differences in brain structure and function [3] and ongoing molecular genetic studies continue to examine numerous regions of the genome [4, 5]. Funding: The Western Reserve Reading and Math Project and International Longitudinal Twin Study were funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (www.nichd.nih.gov; HD038075, HD075460, HD068728, HD027802, HD038526). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The larger reading literature has been engaged in intense study of the relation between early reading, when children acquire reading skills, and later reading, when children are using reading to learn and comprehend. Because the cognitive demand shifts and pedagogic emphases change dramatically in reading over the course of the elementary school years, this transition has been widely referred to in the literature as two stages: learning to read and reading to learn[6]. In the learning to read years there is much direct instruction which focuses on language and decoding skills, whereas the reading to learn years primarily consist of independent reading and focus on comprehension. Though reading appears to be very different across the early grades, as the task of reading increasingly shifts away from decoding words towards understanding and using text for learning, there is also evidence pointing towards stability in reading ability. For example, several aspects of early reading ability involved in learning to read such as phonological awareness [7], decoding [8], fluency [9], and vocabulary [10] predict successful reading (...truncated)


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Brooke Soden, Micaela E. Christopher, Jacqueline Hulslander, Richard K. Olson, Laurie Cutting, Janice M. Keenan, Lee A. Thompson, Sally J. Wadsworth, Erik G. Willcutt, Stephen A. Petrill. Longitudinal Stability in Reading Comprehension Is Largely Heritable from Grades 1 to 6, PLOS ONE, 2015, 1, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0113807