“…Although the shared etiology of reading and cognitive abilities is still largely an open question, previous behavioral genetic twin studies of executive functions and cognitive ability more generally offer strong evidence that, to the extent that there is shared variance with reading, it will likely be due to genetic influences. Previous behavioral genetic studies of individual differences in children on different aspects of executive function and cognitive ability, including working memory, inhibition, processing speed, and naming speed, have consistently found these abilities to be highly heritable, with genetic influences capturing roughly half of the variance when measured with single tasks (Ando, Ono, & Wright, 2001; Haworth et al, 2010; Lukowski et al, 2014; Plomin & Spinath, 2002; Polderman et al, 2006). When measured with latent variables, genetic influences capture up to nearly 100% of the variance (Friedman et al, 2008).…”