TY - JOUR
T1 - Chimpanzee intelligence is heritable
AU - Hopkins, William D.
AU - Russell, Jamie L.
AU - Schaeffer, Jennifer
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by NIH grants MH-92923, NS-42867, NS-73134, and HD-60563 to W.D.H. and National Center for Research Resources grant P51RR165 to YNPRC, which is currently supported by the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs under OD P51OD11132). We appreciate the helpful comments of the four reviewers and Alex Weiss for bringing to our attention the use of parallel analysis in determining the number of components to extract with PCA.
PY - 2014/7/21
Y1 - 2014/7/21
N2 - The role that genes play in human intelligence or IQ has remained a point of significant scientific debate dating back to the time of Galton [1]. It has now become increasingly clear that IQ is heritable in humans, but these effects can be modified by nongenetic mechanisms [2-4]. In contrast to human IQ, until recently, views of learning and cognition in animals have largely been dominated by the behaviorist school of thought, originally championed by Watson [5] and Skinner [6]. A large body of accumulated research now demonstrates a variety of cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals and challenges traditional behaviorist interpretations of performance [7, 8]. This, in turn, has led to a renewed interest in the role that social and biological factors might play in explaining individual and phylogenetic differences in cognition [9]. Specifically, aside from early attempts to selectively breed for learning skills in rodents [10-12], studies examining the role that genetic factors might play in individual variation in cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals, particularly nonhuman primates, are scarce. Here, we utilized a modified Primate Cognitive Test Battery [13] in conjunction with quantitative genetic analyses to examine whether cognitive performance is heritable in chimpanzees. We found that some but not all cognitive traits were significantly heritable in chimpanzees. We further found significant genetic correlations between different dimensions of cognitive functioning, suggesting that the genes that explain the variability of one cognitive trait might also explain that of other cognitive traits.
AB - The role that genes play in human intelligence or IQ has remained a point of significant scientific debate dating back to the time of Galton [1]. It has now become increasingly clear that IQ is heritable in humans, but these effects can be modified by nongenetic mechanisms [2-4]. In contrast to human IQ, until recently, views of learning and cognition in animals have largely been dominated by the behaviorist school of thought, originally championed by Watson [5] and Skinner [6]. A large body of accumulated research now demonstrates a variety of cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals and challenges traditional behaviorist interpretations of performance [7, 8]. This, in turn, has led to a renewed interest in the role that social and biological factors might play in explaining individual and phylogenetic differences in cognition [9]. Specifically, aside from early attempts to selectively breed for learning skills in rodents [10-12], studies examining the role that genetic factors might play in individual variation in cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals, particularly nonhuman primates, are scarce. Here, we utilized a modified Primate Cognitive Test Battery [13] in conjunction with quantitative genetic analyses to examine whether cognitive performance is heritable in chimpanzees. We found that some but not all cognitive traits were significantly heritable in chimpanzees. We further found significant genetic correlations between different dimensions of cognitive functioning, suggesting that the genes that explain the variability of one cognitive trait might also explain that of other cognitive traits.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cub.2014.05.076
DO - 10.1016/j.cub.2014.05.076
M3 - Article
C2 - 25017206
AN - SCOPUS:84904978512
SN - 0960-9822
VL - 24
SP - 1649
EP - 1652
JO - Current Biology
JF - Current Biology
IS - 14
ER -