Exploratory cumulative genetic scores for mathematical ability moderate the relationship between parental educational involvement and children’s mathematical ability: a four-wave longitudinal study

Abstract

This study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal interaction effects of parental educational involvement and the cumulative genetic scores (CGS) of four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) potentially related to mathematical ability on children’s mathematical ability, and distinguished the roles of the father and the mother. The participants included 862 Chinese children ( M T1age =8.74 ± 0.58; T1age range from 7 to 11; 344 girls) who were investigated four waves from 3rd to 6th grades. A series of hierarchical regression analysis were conducted to examine the concurrent and longitudinal interaction effects of CGS and paternal/maternal educational involvement on the children’s mathematical ability. Latent growth models with covariates were employed to test the moderating effect of CGS between the development trajectory of paternal/maternal educational involvement and the development trajectory of mathematical ability. After Benjamini–Hochberg (B–H) correction, the results showed that in grades 5 and 6, the interaction between the concurrent maternal educational involvement and CGS affected children’s mathematical ability (β=−0.507, p < 0.05; β=−0.449, p < 0.05). Furthermore, in grade 5, the maternal educational involvement in the previous year interacted with the CGS to influence children’s mathematical ability (β=−0.439, p < 0.05). The interaction patterns were consistent with the strong diathesis-stress model. Longitudinal analyses further corroborated these findings: in the low CGS group, the slope of maternal educational involvement significantly predicted the slope of mathematical ability ( b = 0.63, t = 14.26, p < 0.001), whereas no significant predictive effect was observed in the high CGS group. From a longitudinal dynamic development perspective, this study explored the changes in the gene-environment interaction of children’s mathematical ability over time, providing preliminary evidence for early intervention in children’s mathematical ability from the perspective of longitudinal gene-environment interaction.