Polygenic underpinnings of learning over 100 days

We examine how polygenic scores (PGS) for educational attainment and cognitive performance relate to improvements in performance across nine cognitive tests (measuring perceptual speed, working memory, and episodic memory) administered to 131 adults (N = 51, ages = 20-31 and N= 80, ages 65-80 years) repeatedly across 100 days. Results indicate that (1) PGS associations with performance on a given task may change over the course of learning, with the specific pattern of change in associations differing across tasks, (2) PGS correlations with pre-test to post-test scores may mask variability in when the learning occurs over the course of practice, and (3) the associations between PGS and learning do not appear to simply reconstitute patterns of association between baseline performance and subsequent learning.