Brian L. Byrne

Twins linguistics research

In 2000, Byrne and the Department of Psychology at the University of New England (UNE), with support from the Australian Research Council, were selected by the United States National Institute of Health to take part in a $US5 million study of the development of reading ability in children. The study also included research teams in Colorado, Nevada, and Norway and other prominent social scientists such as John C. DeFries. The study used twins as its research subjects in order to better examine the impact of genetics versus environmental factors in the development of reading ability. UNE's share of the funding was $US1.14 million over five years. The Australian portion of the project initially studied eighty pairs of identical and fraternal twins from Sydney and Melbourne listed in the National Health and Medical Research Council's Twins Registry based at the University of Melbourne.

In 2008, the researchers published the results of their research, finding that genetic factors were more influential than environmental ones in the development of reading ability in children. Byrne cautioned, however, that, "Intensive and well-designed classroom and preschool interventions can make a difference for struggling readers." Byrne was subsequently selected in 2012 as lead researcher for a follow-on study of 2,000 twins listed in the National Literacy and Numeracy Assessment.