The National Project on Achievement in Twins (NatPAT) is funded by the National Institutes of Health (grant number HD052120).
We are interested in understanding how reading and math skills develop together through elementary school. Twins allow us understand more about how these skills develop, namely the "nature and nurture" of the process.
Using a cohort-sequential design starting in kindergarten, we will examine reading and math performance across elementary school in order to model genetic and environmental influences on reading and math (co-)development (Specific Aim 1). Second, we will model the genetic and environmental influences on the co-occurrence of reading and math difficulties, while also testing for sex differences (Specific Aim 2). Third, we will capitalize on publically available data to characterize the environmental contexts related to the (co-)development of reading and math performance (Specific Aim 3). Finally, we will capture important attitudinal individual differences dimensions and examine how they are associated with the (co-)development of reading and math performance (Specific Aim 4).