The major goals of the proposed two-year study are to retest 175 sibling pairs originally tested ten or more years ago in the Hawaii Family Study of Cognition. Of these pairs 100 are Americans of European ancestry and 75 are Americans of Japanese ancestry. We will also test the spouses of these offsprings in order to (1) determine the extent to which active phenotypic assortment and/or social homogamy are responsible for spouse correlations in cognitive abilities, educational and occupational attainment and personality; (2) determine the relative influence of family background, of cognitive abilities and personality measured during adolescence, and of present cognitive abilities and personality on the educational and occupational attainments of these now-adult offspring; and (3) assess longitudinal changes in cognitive abilities and personality between adolescence and young adulthood and possible factors accounting for these changes. Cultural factors relevant to all three of the above goals will be considered by comparing the results of AEA vs. AJA subjects. All subjects and their spouses will complete a questionnaire on their demographic characteristics, educational attainment, occupation, income, etc. and will then be administered the HFSC battery of 15 cognitive abilities tests, a standardized measure of personality, the Adjective Check List, and a scale of Machiavellianism. The question of phenotypic assortment versus social homogamy in determining spouse correlations will be resolved by comparing the spouse correlations with the cross-sibling spouse correlations and through model-fitting procedures. The question of influences on offspring educational and occupational attainment will be resolved through hierarchal multiple regression procedures and multivariate path models of familial transmission, while repeated measures analyses of variance and models of familial transmission of longitudinal changes will be used to resolve the last question. Given the extensive body of data already available and to be collected on these offsprings, several other subsidiary issues related to cognitive abilities, educational and occupational attainment, personality, and assortative mating will also be addressed by this study.
| Nagoshi, C T; Johnson, R C (1993) Familial transmission of cognitive abilities in offspring tested in adolescence and adulthood: a longitudinal study. Behav Genet 23:279-85 |
| Nagoshi, C T; Johnson, R C; Honbo, K A (1993) Family background, cognitive abilities, and personality as predictors of education and occupational attainment across two generations. J Biosoc Sci 25:259-76 |
| Johnson, R C; Honbo, K A; Nagoshi, C T (1989) Characteristics of emigrants from Hawaii. J Biosoc Sci 21:453-9 |
