All I know

Wilson effect

1 min read

The Wilson effect is the observed increase in IQ Heritability with age.

Heritability typically stands at 0.2 at 5 years old, and reaches 0.8 in adulthood. From Bouchard1:

This phenomenon mostly comes from:

  • The reduction of the impact of shared environment (family, early education…)
  • The action of phenotype on environment (smart children seeking more education…)2

Phenotype → environment

Footnotes

  1. Bouchard (2013), The Wilson Effect: The Increase in Heritability of IQ With Age ↩

  2. Beam et al. (2015), Twin Differentiation of Cognitive Ability Through Phenotype to Environment Transmission: The Louisville Twin Study ↩

Graph View