Heritability of Factor V: Verbal Comprehension

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Abstract
33 pairs of MZ twins and 12 pairs of like-sexed DZ twins, 32 boys and 58 girls, 40 of whom were Negro and 50 white, whose ages ranged from 13 to 18, were given a battery of verbal comprehension tests which included the Heim Self-judging Vocabulary Test, the Wide-Range Vocabulary Test, the Heim Vocabulary Test, and the Spelling Achievement Test. Using three different heritability ratios, (1) the Holzinger heritability coefficient, (2) the heritability ratio proposed by Nichols, and (3) the F ratio (Block), the relative intrapair similarity of MZ and like-sexed DZ twins on the verbal comprehension tests was determined. All the MZ correlations were greater than the corresponding rs for the DZ twin-pairs. Two of the six differences were significant ( p ≤ .05). The range of heritability coefficient ratios (Holzinger) was from .35 to .78, with MZ intraclass rs ranging from .45 to .86, with DZ rs from –.34 to .40. The agreement among tests suggests that verbal comprehension as tested by the various performance tests is heritable with as much as .78 of the within-family variance attributable to hereditary factors.

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