Big thanks to all our co-authors, and special kudos to @everhoef.bsky.social! @profsimonfisher.bsky.social @luciadehoyos.bsky.social Fenja Schlag, Jeffrey van der Ven, Philip Dale, Evan Kidd Mitchell Olislagers

Motor abilities in young infants were genetically linked to self-care/symbolic actions in older infants, and, independently, self-care/symbolic actions were linked to infant/toddler language, consistent with ‘gateway’ theories where motor achievements provide social learning opportunities.

No. Of course not! We just use scientific wording. It means: if children sing and hum and clap while young, they may achieve better speech later on; the PGS for rhythmicity is a means to verify this link using data based on hundreds of thousands independent people that could clap to a beat.

Yes, we know, polygenetic overlap is small, that is inherent in these sorts of analyses. However, genetic analyses are done here to add validity to phenotypic analyses. Our genetically informed SEM recaptures our phenotypic SEM quite well, and the phenotypic links are not so small.

That's a shame! It still puzzles me how they got it published given N.

Could you simulate the data based on their input parameters? The size of SEs given the low N should be enormous and demonstrate the lack of reliable signal.

Congratulations! Amazing news!