PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Malanchini, Margherita
AU  - Rimfeld, Kaili
AU  - Gidziela, Agnieszka
AU  - Cheesman, Rosa
AU  - Allegrini, Andrea G.
AU  - Shakeshaft, Nicholas
AU  - Schofield, Kerry
AU  - Packer, Amy
AU  - Ogden, Rachel
AU  - McMillan, Andrew
AU  - Ritchie, Stuart J.
AU  - Dale, Philip S.
AU  - Eley, Thalia C.
AU  - Stumm, Sophie von
AU  - Plomin, Robert
TI  - Pathfinder: A gamified measure to integrate general cognitive ability into the biological, medical and behavioural sciences
AID  - 10.1101/2021.02.10.430571
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.02.10.430571
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/02/10/2021.02.10.430571.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/02/10/2021.02.10.430571.full
AB  - Genome-wide association (GWA) studies have uncovered DNA variants associated with individual differences in general cognitive ability (g), but these are far from capturing heritability estimates obtained from twin studies. A major barrier is measurement heterogeneity. In a series of four studies, we created a 15-minute, online, gamified measure of g that is highly reliable, psychometrically valid and scalable. In a fifth study, we administered this measure to 4,751 young adults from the Twins Early Development Study. This novel g measure, which also yields verbal and nonverbal scores, showed substantial twin heritability (57%) and SNP heritability (37%). A polygenic score computed from GWA studies of five cognitive and educational traits accounted for 12% of the variation in g, the strongest DNA-based prediction of g to date. Widespread use of this engaging new measure will advance research not only in genomics but throughout the biological, medical and behavioural sciences.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.