TY - JOUR
T1 - A multivariate twin study of early literacy in Japanese kana
AU - Fujisawa, Keiko K.
AU - Wadsworth, Sally J.
AU - Kakihana, Shinichiro
AU - Olson, Richard K.
AU - DeFries, John C.
AU - Byrne, Brian
AU - Ando, Juko
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to the Tokyo Twin Cohort Project, our testers, the twins and their parents. M. Koyama, S., Yamagata, K. Ozaki and K. Fukunaka provided us with valuable comments on tasks and analyses in this study. This study was funded by a grant from the Japan Science and Technology (JST) , Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX) , and the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) . S. J. Wadsworth, R. K. Olson and J. C. DeFries were supported in part by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grant HD027802 .
PY - 2013/4
Y1 - 2013/4
N2 - This first Japanese twin study of early literacy development investigated the extent to which genetic and environmental factors influence individual differences in prereading skills in 238 pairs of twins at 42. months of age. Twin pairs were individually tested on measures of phonological awareness, kana letter name/sound knowledge, receptive vocabulary, visual perception, nonword repetition, and digit span. Results obtained from univariate behavioral-genetic analyses yielded little evidence for genetic influences, but substantial shared-environmental influences, for all measures. Phenotypic confirmatory factor analysis suggested three correlated factors: phonological awareness, letter name/sound knowledge, and general prereading skills. Multivariate behavioral genetic analyses confirmed relatively small genetic and substantial shared environmental influences on the factors. The correlations among the three factors were mostly attributable to shared environment. Thus, shared environmental influences play an important role in the early reading development of Japanese children.
AB - This first Japanese twin study of early literacy development investigated the extent to which genetic and environmental factors influence individual differences in prereading skills in 238 pairs of twins at 42. months of age. Twin pairs were individually tested on measures of phonological awareness, kana letter name/sound knowledge, receptive vocabulary, visual perception, nonword repetition, and digit span. Results obtained from univariate behavioral-genetic analyses yielded little evidence for genetic influences, but substantial shared-environmental influences, for all measures. Phenotypic confirmatory factor analysis suggested three correlated factors: phonological awareness, letter name/sound knowledge, and general prereading skills. Multivariate behavioral genetic analyses confirmed relatively small genetic and substantial shared environmental influences on the factors. The correlations among the three factors were mostly attributable to shared environment. Thus, shared environmental influences play an important role in the early reading development of Japanese children.
KW - Behavioral genetics
KW - Early literacy
KW - Japanese kana syllabary
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84875253023&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84875253023&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.lindif.2012.12.018
DO - 10.1016/j.lindif.2012.12.018
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84875253023
SN - 1041-6080
VL - 24
SP - 160
EP - 167
JO - Learning and Individual Differences
JF - Learning and Individual Differences
ER -