AN INVESTIGATION OF SIMILARITIES IN PARENT-CHILD TEST SCORES FOR EVIDENCE OF HEREDITARY COMPONENTS
Abstract
The general hypothesis of this study states that certain psychological traits which have their scores distributed continuously may actually have an underlying genetic dichotomy which is masked by various other effects. One hundred and four fathers and mothers and their teenage sons or daughters were given eight psychological tests: Symbol Comparison, Word Association, Mental Arithmetic, Pitch Discrimination, Letter Con cepts, Spelling, Identical Blocks, and English Vocabulary. These data were analyzed both by correlational methods and dichotomic analysis. To test the hypothesis of dichotomic analysis, correlations between family members for each variable in the study were obtained from standard scores which partialed out the age differences in the raw scores. From these correlations, it was observed that there was only one variable, word association, which did not show a signifi cant similarity between at least one of the parents and one of their offspring. Two of the variables, English vocabulary and height, showed a highly significant correlation between fathers and mothers which negated the second part of the first hypoth The correlational method was accepted because two variables showed a unique family correlation pattern.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 1963
- Accession Number
- AD0410172
Entities
People
- Richard E. Stafford
Organizations
- Princeton University