Twins Early Development Study - Major Findings and Contributions

Major Findings and Contributions

Oliver & Plomin (2007) provide an overview of TEDS findings. TEDS has made major contributions to the Genetics and Education literature, such as the formulation of the Generalist Genes Hypothesis of learning abilities and disabilities, and important contributions to the literature on the heritability of IQ and school achievement. Novel findings from TEDS also include the discovery that social and non-social behaviours exhibited by children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) are largely influenced by different genes. With respect to molecular genetics, TEDS has pioneered a novel strategy called SNP Microarrays and Pooling (SNP-MaP), which is a cost-effective and powerful way of genotyping DNA as it allows researchers to use one microarray instead of hundreds to genotype a group’s pooled DNA. It is hoped that it will eventually be possible to use the insights obtained from studies such as TEDS to help prevent or alleviate common learning disabilities such as dyslexia.