About 40 people gathered for the presentation on twin research in the IUS Library on Wednesday, Sept. 24.
The event aimed to take a psychological look at this research. It presented information collected from twin studies.
It was hosted by Deborah Finkel, psychology professor. She said she has collected twin research for about 12 years total.
“The most exciting thing is to look at the dynamic change over time,” Finkel said. “In the last 10 years, there have been huge advances in math modeling. There’s a lot going on.”
Finkel began researching twins during graduate school in 1986.
She went to the Karolinska Institution in Sweden, which is a medical facility and famous institution. She said the faculty there chooses who wins the Nobel Prize in science.
She said she is still working on the Swedish twin research and travels to the institute on occasion.
“It’s my role to analyze the data,” Finkel said. “I am the principal investigator now along with a colleague in L.A. We don’t have to be in Sweden because we use e-mails and video conferences to stay in touch.”
Meanwhile, Finkel is presenting her findings from that research to students at IU Southeast.
At the beginning of the event, Finkel said twin research identifies genetic and environmental influences on behavior.
“Behavior genetics is the official name,” she said. “We’re not only studying identical twins, but also fraternal and separated twins as well.”
Identical twins share 100 percent of all genes while fraternal twins share an average of 50 percent.
Separated twins are raised apart from each other. Finkel said this is important because it shows how the environment can affect two people with the same genetic coding.
She also went into detail about the variants that make people up. These variants are variables in traits, such as hair color.
“Imagine you have a pie of variants,” Finkel said. “There are three pieces. One is genetics, one is a shared environment and the other is a non-shared environment. We want to see how big the genetics piece of the pie really is.”
A shared environment means common things both twins experience. A non-shared environment includes differences, such as friends or broken bones.
Finkel said a genetic influence is not the same as a genetic predisposition. She said this is like having a parent who smokes and a child who does not smoke. She said the environment makes the difference there.
“Genes really determine the range of what a person will be like,” she said. “The environment determines where you fall in that range.”
Finkel then went on to talk about general intelligence in twins. She said this area has four primary areas, which are verbal ability, memory, spatial ability and processing speed.
For those four areas, she had a few pie charts to show the research she gathered from Sweden. This research showed how the twins’ general intelligence changed with age. The results varied.
At the end, Finkel interpreted her data for the attendees. She said verbal ability is mostly a result of the environment while processing speed is mostly a result of genetics.
Memory and spatial ability were about 50 percent environmental and 50 percent genetic.
Alyssa Allen, undecided freshman, said the event held her interest.
“It went a little fast for me, so she could’ve slowed it down,” she said. “The most interesting part was how there wasn’t a genetic influence on verbal ability.”
This event was part of an on-going series called A Little Knowledge.
Nancy Totten, librarian, said she hoped the series takes complicated information and takes it to an accessible level.
“It’s an opportunity for our faculty to explain their research,” Totten said. “Because it’s accessible, everyone sees how valuable research is at IUS.”
The next event in the series will be hosted in the library as well. It will be on Wednesday, Oct. 29, starting at 12:15 p.m.. Jerry Rodgers, adjunct lecturer in English, will present information on being a playwright.
Totten said Rodgers will focus on how to write plays, but he will also read and maybe perform a scene as well.
By JOSEPH DEVER
Staff Writer
jwdever@ius.edu