Timothy Bates

Timothy C. Bates (born 1963) is a Professor of Individual Differences in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, UK. His current research interests include the genetics of reading and spelling; intelligence; and personality. [See [http://www.psy.ed.ac.uk/people/tbates/ his web page] ]

He is currently a member of the editorial board of the journal "Intelligence". His Ph.D. was completed in 1994 at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, and integrated the Eysenckian dimensional model of psychosis with the categorical model of schizotypy proposed by Paul Meehl, using measures of personality, creativity, evoked potentials, and smooth pursuit eye movement dysfunction. He went on to work in individual differences, genetics, and cognitive neuropsychology, publishing over 50 journal articles.

His principle academic achievements include demonstrating the existence of two distinct forms of dyslexia, underpinned by distinct genes, [Bates, T. C., Luciano, M., Castles, A., Wright, M., Coltheart, M., & Martin, N. G. (2006). Genetic and environmental bases of reading and spelling: A unified dual-route genetic model. "Reading and Writing". 1-25] and, subsequently, demonstrating that the genes associated with dyslexia are also linked to normal variation in reading ability. [Bates, T. C., Luciano, M., Castles, A., Wright, M., Coltheart, M., & Martin, N. G. (2007). Replication of reported linkages for Dyslexia and Spelling and suggestive evidence for novel regions on chromosomes 4 and 17. "European Journal of Human Genetics", 15(2):194-203] ]

In positive psychology, he showed (along with Alexander Weiss and Michelle Luciano) that the genes for happiness are genes for personality, suggesting that a general factor of genetic well-being and specific genetic influences from the five factor model traits of Extraversion Neuroticism/Stability and Conscientiousness completely explain the heritable component of differences in happiness. [Weiss, Alexander, Bates, Timothy C. and Luciano, Michelle. (2008). Happiness Is a Personal(ity) Thing: The Genetics of Personality and Well-Being in a Representative Sample. "Psychological Science" "19", 205–210.]

With Caroline Rae, Bates showed that creatine supports cognitive function - finding that creatine supplements in vegans substantially increased their cognitive ability and working memory by comparison with placebo. This supported a literal 'mental energy' model of intelligence, first postulated by Charles Spearman. In his work with the late Hans Eysenck and subsequently with Professor Con Stough on the role of basic information processing speed in human intelligence, he used ERP complexity measures to argue for a modification to the Hendrickson and Hendrickson error [Hendrickson and Hendrickson, 1980. D.E. Hendrickson and A.E. Hendrickson , The biological basis of individual differences in intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences 1 (1980)] or 'string theory' (so named as pins and string were used to make the measurements of EEG output) model of ability, to include a controlling role of attention.Fact|date=October 2008 In related work on reaction time, he introduced a novel modification to the Jensen Box, again controlling the role of attention in this task, and suggesting that under these conditions, intelligence is, as Arthur Jensen proposed, related to the rate of information processing defined in Fitts Law and using Claude Shannon's information metrics.Fact|date=October 2008 With Ian Deary, Paul Irwing, and Geoff Derr, he has reported evidence for substantial gender differences in intelligence in the form of much larger variance amongst males than amongst females, with more boys and men scoring in both the extreme high range, and in the extreme low range.Fact|date=October 2008

References

External links

* [http://www.psy.ed.ac.uk/people/tbates Timothy Bates' homepage] at the University of Edinburgh