Common Genetic and Environmental Influences on Reading, Spelling, and Writing for Older Children and Adolescents

• Other Authors: Diehm, Emily A. (Emily Anne) (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Genetics; Language and languages; Education
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_2015fall_Diehm_fsu_0071E_12849

Narrative writing samples were collected and analyzed for a total sample size of 826 students (413 twin pairs; 159 monozygotic and 524 dizygotic pairs) from the Florida Twin Project on Behavior and Environment (FTP-BE) database who comprise a subset of the Florida Twin Project on Reading (FTP-R). Twins' writing samples were coded using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcript (SALT) conventions to derive measures of syntactic complexity (mean length utterance, clausal density); measures commonly used to assess adolescent writing. Concurrent measures of reading comprehension and spelling were obtained from the Florida Progress Monitoring and Reporting Network (PMRN). Using a behavioral-genetic approach, the common and unique genetic, environmental, and non-shared environmental influences on each variable were analyzed using univariate and multivariate Choleskey decomposition models. Findings suggest that non-shared environmental influences are responsible for much of the variation we see in students' written syntactic complexity, with minimal influence from genes. In contrast, reading comprehension and spelling appear to be highly heritable, with some genetic influences overlapping between the two skills. Shared environmental influences were negligible for all literacy constructs other than reading comprehension. The discussion centers on our need to further understand differential methods of writing assessment, with a focus on the use of traditional elicitation contexts for language sampling within writing, similar to writing expectations on state- and national-level achievement assessments. === A Dissertation submitted to the School of Communication Science and Disorders in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. === Fall Semester 2015. === August 6, 2015. === quantitative genetics, reading, spelling, syntactic complexity, twins, writing === Includes bibliographical references. === Carla Wood, Professor Directing Dissertation; Christopher Schatschneider, University Representative; Hugh Catts, Committee Member; Sara Hart, Committee Member.