Recent results of international assessment programs (e.g., PISA) have shown a large difference in high school students' performance between northern and southern Italy. On this basis, it has been argued that the discrepancy reflects differences in average intelligence of the inhabitants of regions and is associated with genetic factors ( and ).…

Longitudinal research on the links between intelligence and health behaviors among adolescents is rare. We report longitudinal data in which we assessed the relationships between intelligence as assessed in Grade 7 and consequential health outcomes in Grade 11. The mean age of respondents (N = 420; 188 males, 232 females) was 12.30 years (SD =…

Although academic achievement is a heritable construct, to date research has yet to explore its molecular genetic underpinnings. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the current longitudinal study investigated the associations between polymorphisms in three dopaminergic genes (DAT1, DRD2, and DRD4) and…

Receptive foreign language proficiency is usually measured with reading and listening comprehension tasks. A novel approach to assess such proficiencies--viewing comprehension--is based on the presentation of short instructional videos followed by one or more comprehension questions concerning the preceding video stimulus. In order to evaluate a…