Cognitive aspects at age 7 months may help predict ability at age 30: Study

Cognitive aspects at age seven months — such as being able to stay on task or if an infant prefers new toys — could predict cognitive ability at age 30, a new study has found.

General cognitive ability, known widely as `intelligence` or `IQ`, is a composite score that measures one`s capacity to learn, reason, understand and solve problems.

IQ is considered to remain constant between ages 11 and 90.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder in the US, however, said that little is known about the stability of intelligence under age three and how it is related to cognitive ability as an adult.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), looked at over 1,000 twins, measuring general cognitive ability at ages under two, three, seven, 16 and 29.

The team found that two cognitive aspects — a preference for new things and a focus on current tasks — could predict about 13 per cent of how much one`s intelligence score at seven months could deviate by the time they turn 30.

The authors wrote, “Two infant cognition measures, object novelty and tester-rated task orientation, predicted GCA (general cognitive ability) in adulthood.”

“We certainly do not want to imply that cognition is somehow fixed by seven months old. But the idea that a very simple test in infancy can help predict the results of a very complicated cognitive test taken 30 years later is exciting,” lead author Daniel Gustavson, assistant research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said.

Looking at twins also helped the researchers contribute to the nature vs nurture debate in psychology, which is concerned about how much of an individual`s characteristics are due to genetics (nature) and how much is due to environment (nurture).

An interaction between one`s genes and their environment is said to make up a diverse range of traits in a person.

This study compared scores of general cognitive ability between identical twins — they carry almost entirely identical genes — and fraternal twins, who only share half the genes.

A trait being more similar between identical twins, compared to fraternal twins, is known to suggest that genes play a stronger role in the development of that trait.

The researchers found that genetic influences measured by age seven accounted for about half of the changes in scores at age 30 — this meant that genes played a big role in influencing general cognitive ability, they said.

But the environment also had a significant and lasting impact, they added, as “10 per cent of the variability in adult cognitive ability was explained by environmental influences before year one or two,” Gustavson said.

The older the children got, the more influence genes had and the less environment had, the team said.

“This suggests that even the pre-preschool environment matters,” Gustavson said.

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