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Behavioral genetics
Author(s) -
McClearn Gerald E.
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830160106
Subject(s) - heredity , behavioural genetics , aggression , psychology , quantitative trait locus , biology , personality , quantitative genetics , cognition , developmental psychology , big five personality traits , genetics , evolutionary biology , gene , genetic variation , neuroscience , social psychology
Behavioral genetics has shown a striking and accelerating growth since 1950. Research on human beings has largely involved application of quantitative genetic models to continuously varying traits of intelligence and personality, and the favored technique has been one or another version of the twin method. Results have shown that heredity contributes importantly to variation of these behavioral traits, and that different subcategories of these traits are influenced by heredity in different degrees. Single genes have been shown to determine a number of conditions of mental retardation. The behavioral correlates of chromosome anomalies, representing either deficiency or excess of genetic material, appear variously to involve specific cognitive and personality functions as well as the gross mental retardation that characterizes some of these conditions. Research on infrahuman animals has made extensive use of inbred strains (principally mouse) and selected lines (principally rat). Quantitative models have predominated in this research, which has shown hereditary influence in a wide variety of traits, including activity level, alcohol preference, learning, memory and aggression, among others. Elucidating the physiological and biochemical routes through which the genes are expressed in behavioral traits has become an increasingly active research area. The classical work on the biochemical basis of phenylketonuria has provided the model. Other conditions of mental retardation involving amino acidurias have been described in man, and a body of knowledge is coalescing concerning enzymes, neurochemicals and hormones as the pathways in genetic influence of animal behavior. Developmental behavioral genetics is just beginning to emerge and almost all of the available information has been obtained from mouse research. Behavioral processes that may be of crucial importance to population genetics have been identified in Drosophila , and anthropological considerations are raising exciting new hypotheses for research in man.