Weakening of the cognition and height association from 1957 to 2018: Findings from four British birth cohort studies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Taller individuals have been repeatedly found to have higher scores on cognitive assessments. Recent studies have suggested that this association can be explained by genetic factors, yet this does not preclude the influence of environmental or social factors that may change over time. We thus tested whether the association changed across time using data from four British birth cohorts (born in 1946, 1958, 1970, and 2001). Methods: In each cohort height was measured and cognition via verbal reasoning, vocabulary/comprehension, and mathematical tests; at ages 10/11 and 14/17 years (N=41,418). We examined associations between height and cognition at each age, separately in each cohort, and for each cognitive test administered. Linear and quantile regression models were used. Results: Taller participants had higher mean cognitive assessment scores in childhood and adolescence, yet the associations were weaker in later (1970 and 2001) cohorts. For example, the mean difference in height comparing the highest with lowest verbal cognition scores at 10/11 years was 0.57 SD (95% CI = 0.44-0.70) in the 1946 cohort, yet 0.30 SD (0.23-0.37) in the 2001 cohort. Expressed alternatively, there was a reduction in correlation from 0.17 (0.15-0.20) to 0.08 (0.06-0.10). This pattern of change in the association was observed across all ages and cognition measures used, was robust to adjustment for social class and parental height, and modeling of plausible missing-not-at-random scenarios. Quantile regression analyses suggested that these differences were driven by differences in the lower centiles of height, where environmental influence may be greatest. Conclusions: Associations between height and cognitive assessment scores in childhood-adolescence substantially weakened from 1957-2018. These results support the notion that environmental and social change can markedly weaken associations between cognition and other traits. Funding: DB is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/M001660/1); DB and LW by the Medical Research Council (MR/V002147/1). The Medical Research Council (MRC) and the University of Bristol support the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit [MC_UU_00011/1]. NMD is supported by an Norwegian Research Council Grant number 295989. VM is supported by the CLOSER Innovation Fund WP19 which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (award reference: ES/K000357/1) and Economic and Social Research Council (ES/M001660/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".