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Genetic specificity of face recognition - PubMed

  • ️Thu Jan 01 2015

Clinical Trial

. 2015 Oct 13;112(41):12887-92.

doi: 10.1073/pnas.1421881112. Epub 2015 Sep 28.

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Clinical Trial

Genetic specificity of face recognition

Nicholas G Shakeshaft et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015.

Abstract

Specific cognitive abilities in diverse domains are typically found to be highly heritable and substantially correlated with general cognitive ability (g), both phenotypically and genetically. Recent twin studies have found the ability to memorize and recognize faces to be an exception, being similarly heritable but phenotypically substantially uncorrelated both with g and with general object recognition. However, the genetic relationships between face recognition and other abilities (the extent to which they share a common genetic etiology) cannot be determined from phenotypic associations. In this, to our knowledge, first study of the genetic associations between face recognition and other domains, 2,000 18- and 19-year-old United Kingdom twins completed tests assessing their face recognition, object recognition, and general cognitive abilities. Results confirmed the substantial heritability of face recognition (61%), and multivariate genetic analyses found that most of this genetic influence is unique and not shared with other cognitive abilities.

Keywords: behavioral genetics; cognitive psychology; face perception; twin study.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.

Sample stimuli. Sample images for the Cambridge Face Memory Test (20), for both the clean (A) and degraded (B) conditions (see Methods), and for the Cambridge Car Memory Test (21), both clean (C) and degraded (D).

Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.

Model-fitting estimates. Variance due to additive genetic (A), shared environmental (C), and nonshared environmental influences/error (E).

Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.

Decomposition of phenotypic correlations with face recognition. Correlated factor solution analyses, indicating the proportion of the phenotypic correlation between face recognition and each other variable (line length, with 95% confidence intervals) attributable to genetic (A), shared environmental (C), and nonshared environmental influences/error (E).

Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.

Decomposition of heritability of face recognition. Cholesky bivariate (A) and trivariate (B) decomposition analyses, indicating that genetic influences on face recognition ability are largely independent from the genetic influences on general object recognition and g.

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