Genetic and Environmental Influences on Language Ability in Older Adults: Findings from the Older Australian Twins Study |
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| Authors: | T. Lee A. Thalamuthu J. D. Henry J. N. Trollor D. Ames M. J. Wright P. S. Sachdev OATS Research Team |
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| Affiliation: | 1.Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, School of Psychiatry,University of New South Wales,Sydney,Australia;2.Neuropsychiatric Institute,Prince of Wales Hospital,Randwick,Australia;3.School of Psychology,University of Queensland,St Lucia,Australia;4.Department of Developmental Disability Neuropsychiatry,University of New South Wales,Sydney,Australia;5.Queensland Brain Institute,University of Queensland,St Lucia,Australia;6.St George’s Hospital,University of Melbourne Academic Unit for Psychiatry of Old Age,Victoria,Australia;7.Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), NPI Euroa Centre, Prince of Wales Hospital,UNSW Sydney,Randwick,Australia |
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| Abstract: | We used a sub-sample from the Older Australian Twins Study to estimate the heritability of performance on three tests of language ability: Boston Naming Test (BNT), Letter/Phonemic Fluency (FAS) and Category/Semantic Fluency (CFT) Tests. After adjusting for age, sex, education, mood, and global cognition (GC), heritability estimates obtained for the three tests were 0.35, 0.59, and 0.20, respectively. Multivariate analyses showed that the genetic correlation were high for BNT and CFT (0.61), but low for BNT and FAS (0.17), and for FAS and CFT (0.28). Genetic modelling with Cholesky decomposition indicated that the covariation between the three measures could be explained by a common genetic factor. Environmental correlations between the language ability measures were low, and there were considerable specific environmental influences for each measure. Future longitudinal studies with language performance and neuroimaging data can further our understanding of genetic and environmental factors involved in the process of cognitive aging. |
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