Heritability of Motor Skill

Abstract

A total of 22 monozygotic (MZ) and 41 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs were given 72 trials on a stabilometer balance task over six days to study the extent of the genetic contribution to learning and performance of a gross motor skill. The expectations that interindividual differences would be less for the MZ than for the DZ twins and that intraindividual variability would not be different between the two groups were supported. Intraclass correlations were used to provide estimates for the proportions of total phenotypic variance accounted for by heritability (h2), systematic environmental variance (E2), and nonsystematic environmental effects (e2). Heritability was found to be low during the early stages of learning, before it increased to stabilize at approximately 65% for the remaining practice. E2 was highest during these early stages (24%), then declined quickly to stabilize at half that level. Error variance (e2) constituted the remaining variance. Learning profiles of the twin pairs were also analyzed, with a greater intrapair resemblance being found for the MZ twins. The present findings indicate that, for gross motor skills, there is considerable potential for influencing both the levels of performance (and learning) and the differences between individuals by judicious use of systematic environmental effects.

Heritability of motor control and motor learning

“…A significant genetic variance component (0.70) was also found for motor learning. Previous studies reported a similar heritability index for the initial level of motor learning which increased further with practice (Williams and Gross ; Fox et al. ).…”

“…Previous studies have reported a significant genetic effect for motor control, using a variety of tasks, such as pursuit rotor tracking, tapping speed, and stabilometry with heritability ranging from 0.56 to 0.86, depending on the task (Williams and Gross ; Fox et al. ; Maes et al.…”

“…Until recently, the question of the relative importance of genetic and environmental influences on motor control and motor learning was open, as previous studies have been confounded by a number of other biological and behavioral factors (Sklad ; Williams and Gross ; Fox et al. ).…”

Family studies of somatic and functional characteristics in the polish rural population

“…Assumed heritability coefficients from the studies of twins were within 0.12-0.78 [10,13,17,20,25,26] and were higher for static balance than dynamic one. Whereas in the previous family studies [28] there were achieved following magnitudes: h 2 = 0.11 for static balance and h 2 =0.37 for pivot balance.…”

The Registry of Italian Twin Athletes (RITA): Background, design, and procedures,and twin data analysis on sport participation—An application to twin swimmers

“…Marisi (20) found that the heritability for performance on a pursuit-rotor task decreased over 30 practice trials (from an initial 0.79 down to 0.35), in agreement with McNemar's early findings, back in 1933 (21), that exercise did not modify the degree of similarity of MZ co-twins but increased that of DZ co-twins, thus decreasing heritability estimates. On the other hand, Williams and Gross (34) showed that the heritability for a stabilometer task increased after a two-day practice (from 0.27 to 0.69), and remained close to this final level for the next four days. The genetic component of the learning process should also be considered, and in fact it is likely that motor learning be more similar in MZ than DZ co-twins (30).…”