Genotypes over-represented among college students are linked to better cognitive abilities and socioemotional adjustment

Abstract

Genotypes over-represented among college students are linked to better cognitive abilities and socioemotional adjustment Genotypes over-represented among college students are linked to better cognitive abilities and socioemotional adjustment Abstract Although much is known about college students as a special sample in terms of their behavioral traits such as intelligence and academic motivation, no studies have examined whether college students represent a ''biased'' sample in terms of their genotype frequencies. The present study investigated this issue by examining the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium of genotype frequencies of 284 SNPs covering major neurotransmitter genes in a sample of 478 Chinese college students, comparing these frequencies with those of a community sample (the 1000 Genomes dataset), and examining behavioral correlates of the SNPs in Hardy-Weinberg disequilibrium. Results showed that 24 loci showed Hardy-Weinberg disequilibrium among college students, but only two of these were in disequilibrium in the 1000 Genomes sample. These loci were found to be associated with mathematical abilities, executive functions, motivation, and adjustment-related behaviors such as alcohol use and emotion recognition. Generally, genotypes overrepresented in the college sample showed better performance and adjustment than under-represented or non-biased genotypes. This study illustrates a new approach to studying genetic correlates of traits associated with a socially-selected group-college students-and presents the first evidence of genetic stratification in terms of education attainment.

Early musical training contributes to decision-making ability.

“…Data for this study came from a larger project (e.g., Chen et al, 2013; Hou et al, 2014). Five hundred sixty-seven undergraduates at Beijing Normal University took the IGT test as well as other cognitive tests (see below for details).…”

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“…Participants were given a battery of >50 measures that cover major aspects of human behaviors such as perception, memory, executive function, intelligence, personality, mathematical abilities, and language abilities. The specific tasks were selected because they have been widely used in previous studies and proved to have good psychometric properties (see Chen et al, 2013, for detailed descriptions of the measures. Please note that Chen et al only examined the 480 participants whose genetic data were analyzed.).…”

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“…Cognitive and behavioral measures included working memory, executive functions (assessed with the Attention Network Test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, and a reversal learning test), IQ, personality and motivation traits (for example, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) and so on. Detailed information on cognitive and behavioral data acquisition, genotyping and statistical analysis can be found in the previous studies 47,48 and Supplementary Data and Supplementary Table S1.…”