Question

Biopsychology question

What is wrong with these statements:

Part 1) Heritability of enuresis (bed wetting) is 33% in boys and 10% in girls. Therefore, a boy is more affected by his genes (genes associated with bed wetting) than girls are affected by their genes (genes associated with bed wetting).

Part 2) Genes and environments always interact within an individual; heritability can tell us nothing about that interaction.

Answer 1

1. The enuresis is repeated inability to control urination and is twice as common in boys than girls, and most cases are thought to be due to delayed neurological maturation which simply corrects itself with time and there is no role of genes in it.

2. Heritability is nothing but the statistic used in the fields of breeding and genetics which estimates the degree of variation in a phenotypic trait in a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population. both environmental factors and the genes influence traits and in turn heritability and also can tell various interactions between genes and environmental factors. Estimation of heritability in populations depends on the partitioning of observed variation into components that reflect unobserved genetic and environmental factors.
Therefore heritability can tell about the interactions between Genes and environments.