TITLE:
Genetic and Environmental Influences on Perceptual-Motor Abilities
AUTHORS:
Cassio M. Meira Jr., Marcelo Massa
KEYWORDS:
Behavior Genetics, Heritability, Twins, Motor Ability, Motor Behavior
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.8 No.11,
August
31,
2017
ABSTRACT: Ability poses limitations on a person’s potential for success in a given task. Perceptual-motor abilities are thought to be traits regarded as having been either genetically determined or developed through motor experience. This study examined genetic and environmental influences on perceptual-motor abilities in twins (13 sets of monozygotic and 18 sets of dizygotic, mean age = 17.2 ± 3.5 years) by measuring the performance on tasks whose main underlying perceptual-motor abilities are rate control, simple reaction time, hand-eye coordination, finger dexterity, and manual force control. The results suggest that little support was given to Turkheimer’s Laws of Behavior Genetics, as high proportions of variance on the performance were attributable to 1) additive genetic factors for rate control only, 2) shared family environment for finger dexterity and hand-eye coordination, and 3) nonshared environment for rate control and simple reaction time.