Genes Influence Young Children’s Human Figure Drawings and Their Association With Intelligence a Decade Later

Rosalind Arden; Maciej Trzaskowski; Victoria Garfield; Robert Plomin

doi:10.1177/0956797614540686

Genes Influence Young Children’s Human Figure Drawings and Their Association With Intelligence a Decade Later

¹MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London
²Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London

Rosalind Arden, MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, PO80, De Crespigny Park, London, United Kingdom SE5 8AF E-mail: rosalind.arden{at}kcl.ac.uk

Author Contributions R. Arden and M. Trzaskowski would like to be considered as joint first authors. R. Arden developed the study concept. R. Arden, M. Trzaskowski, and R. Plomin contributed to the study design. R. Arden and M. Trzaskowski performed the data analyses. R. Arden drafted the manuscript, and all authors provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Abstract

Drawing is ancient; it is the only childhood cognitive behavior for which there is any direct evidence from the Upper Paleolithic. Do genes influence individual differences in this species-typical behavior, and is drawing related to intelligence (g) in modern children? We report on the first genetically informative study of children’s figure drawing. In a study of 7,752 pairs of twins, we found that genetic differences exert a greater influence on children’s figure drawing at age 4 than do between-family environmental differences. Figure drawing was as heritable as g at age 4 (heritability of .29 for both). Drawing scores at age 4 correlated significantly with g at age 4 (r = .33, p < .001, n = 14,050) and with g at age 14 (r = .20, p < .001, n = 4,622). The genetic correlation between drawing at age 4 and g at age 14 was .52, 95% confidence interval = [.31, .75]. Individual differences in this widespread behavior have an important genetic component and a significant genetic link with g.

Article Notes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding The Twins Early Development Study is supported by a program grant to R. Plomin from the United Kingdom Medical Research Council (Grant G0901245, and previously Grant G0500079), with additional support from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (Grants HD044454 and HD059215). R. Plomin is supported by a United Kingdom Medical Research Council Research Professorship award (G19/2) and a European Research Council Advanced Investigator award (295366).
Supplemental Material Additional supporting information can be found at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data

Received January 8, 2014.
Accepted May 29, 2014.

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