Episode 3
Decoding DNA: Predicting Intelligence and Driving Academic Success
Imagine a future where the key to unlocking your potential lies not just in hard work or effective study habits, but within the very strands of your DNA. What if science could unravel the secrets behind our intellectual abilities and illuminate pathways to academic success? As we stand on the brink of groundbreaking advancements in genetics, researchers are beginning to explore how our genetic makeup could predict intelligence and learning capabilities.
The Hungry Mind Lab, based at the University of York and directed by Professor Sophie von Stumm, conducts research that uses big data and novel methods to explore the causes and consequences of people’s individual differences in behavioural and cognitive development, asking “why are people so different?". The lab runs studies investigating how people’s personality traits, early life environments, and genetic tendencies influence and predict their intelligence, language learning, and educational attainment.
Our guests:
Florence Oxley is a researcher in early years cognitive, communicative and motor development, working at the University of York. She previously worked with the Hungry Mind Lab, on a project about how genes and the environment work together in shaping us cognitively. Florence now works at the York BabyLab on a project using ultrasound of the tongue to explore how sensorimotor feedback from babies' own movements contributes to speech and language development.
Kirsty Wilding is in her final year of her PhD at the Department of Education at the University of York. Kirsty’s PhD studies focus on the association between family background differences and children’s educational and language development. So far Kirsty has focused on how polygenic scores, which index children’s genetic tendencies for education, predict their school performance. She now focuses on disentangling genetic factors from environmental influences that inform together children’s family background differences.
Resources:
https://www.hungrymindlab.com/projects/genetics/
