The Origins of Diverse Domains of Mathematics: Generalist Genes but Specialist Environments
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Updated: Jun 20, 2026

Multimedia Battery for Assessment of Cognitive and Basic Skills in Mathematics (BM-PROMA)
Published on: August 28, 2021
Y Kovas1, S A Petrill, R Plomin
1Institute of Psychiatry.
Abstract:
The authors assessed 2,502 ten-year-old children, members of 1,251 pairs of twins, on a Web-based battery of problems from 5 diverse aspects of mathematics assessed as part of the U.K. national curriculum. This 1st genetic study into the etiology of variation in different domains of mathematics showed that the heritability estimates were moderate and highly similar across domains and that these genetic influences were mostly general. Environmental factors unique to each twin in a family (rather than shared by the 2 twins) explained most of the remaining variance, and these factors were mostly specific to each domain.
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