FAMILIAL TRANSMISSION OF COGNITIVE-ABILITIES IN OFFSPRING TESTED IN ADOLESCENCE AND ADULTHOOD - A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY

As part of a follow-up study of now-adult offspring who originally par ticipate in the Hawaii Family Study of Cognition (HFSC) from 1972 to 1 976, 49 females and 46 males from 73 families of Caucasian ancestry an d 63 females and 55 males from 92 families of Japanese ancestry were r etested (average test-retest interval, 13 years) on the battery of cog nitive abilities tests they took as adolescents. Age-corrected scale s cores for verbal ability, spatial ability, perceptual speed, visual me mory, and unrotated first principal component were calculated for the offspring's fathers and mothers, for their original HFSC testing, and for the retesting. Model-fitting procedures for a univariate model of familial transmission indicated significant differences in the paramet ers between the two racial/ethnic groups for all five cognitive abilit ies scales. These procedures also demonstrated no significant differen ces in familialities for offspring abilities in adolescence vs. mature adulthood across all five abilities scales and both racial/ethnic gro ups.