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What I do

I mainly work in Behavior and molecular genetics, particularly twin studies, but also brain imaging.
I am a Differential Psychologist, working on understanding people and society through the insights that differences between individuals provide. I mainly work using behavior and molecular genetic designs, particularly, the twin study. I am expert in cognitive research, including dyslexia, and in personality an social behaviour. We've done a little brain imaging on the side, along with measures such as symmetry. My google scholar profile is here. A pdf word cloud of topics and co-authors is here

What we've found out about the mind

  • Language
    • ROBO1 is a gene for the phonological loop component of the human language system [13]
    • There are at least two genetically distinct forms of dyslexia: [14], one affecting learning the to decode letters into sounds, the other building a sight-vocabulary for rapid reading for meaning.[9]
    • The genetics of reading disorder is identical in normal and severe cases [8]
    • We've also found gene mutations that affect language: A mutation in DYX1C1 is associated with poor reading [12], as are changes in KIAA0319 [23] and DCDC2 [22].
  • Memory
    • We showed that a mutation in KIBRA specifically affects forgetting information (independent of initial learning) [11].
  • Intelligence
    • Breastfeeding
      • We found that breastfeeding does not raise IQ, even in interaction with the common Fatty acid desaturase mutation in the FADS2 gene. [25]
    • Symmetry
      • Intelligence is linked to symmetry [10]. Symmetry is not linked to personality [15]
      • Like cognition, symmetry improves across development until early adolescence.
      • Early childhood deprivation leaves a mark in facial symmetry [16]
      • In old age, facial symmetry predicts rate of cognitive decline [26]
    • Reaction Time: We showed that, controlling for stimulus availability, IQ is associated with the slope of reaction time on the Jensen Box.
      • Bates, T. C. and Stough, C. (1998). Improved Reaction Time Method, Information Processing Speed, and Intelligence. Intelligence, 26. 53-62. doi.
    • Intelligence and religion: Gary Lewis, Stuart Ritchie and Tim Bates study was reported in, for instance, The New Zealand Herald this week with their study linking higher intelligence to reduced levels of fundamentalism.
    • Music and smoking. We showed that Music, even glorious Mozart, does not raise IQ [27], but that smoking does [28]
    • Complexity We found support for attentional and string length models of intelligence [1], [2] [3], relating these to the neurotransmitter Acetylcholine [29], [30]
      • Bates, T. C. and Stough, C. (1997). Processing speed, attention, and intelligence: Effects of spatial attention on decisions time in high and low IQ subjects. Personality & Individual Differences, 23. 861-868.
    • We continue to search for genes for intelligence, with no success :-) [24],
    • I have tried to synthesis these results and others toward a theory of school and education [((bibcite Bates2008_education))]
  • Neuropsychology
    • With Laura Hughes, we distinguished what people see (indexed by pointing) and what they grasp (indexed by picking up) [17], [18], [19]
  • Personality and Positive_Psychology
    • Wellbeing: We showed that the genes for happiness are personality genes for the 5FM [31]
    • Schizotypy
      • With Viviana Wuthrich, we showed this has a three-factor structure, mapping onto that of schizophrenia, relating this to latent inhibition and to smooth pursuit eye movement disorder [32], [33], [34], [35]
      • With Ulrich Ettinger and Christine Macare we showed that genetic origins of magical ideation appear to lie in neuroticism and mania. Christine won best student prize for her research on the genetic architecture of schizotypal personality at ISSID in London 2011 for this work.
      • I also found support for a perceptual imprecision model of schizophrenia [7]
    • Extraversion: With Andrew Rock, we confirmed the arousal model of Extraversion, showing that Extraverts perform most intelligently when in a noisy environment (which raises arousal), while ambiverts perform best with a moderate level of arousal, and introvert's performance declines with any noise (not sound, but noise: uninformative energy) in the environment. [6]
    • Openness: With Alex Shieles, we showed that openness is linked to knowledge, but not linked to information processing bases of intelligence.[5]
  • Politics
    • With Gary Lewis, we showed how personality affects how we vote – working indirectly via a set of five core moral values (see Jonathan Haidt to learn more about these values).[21], [20]
    • With Gary Lewis and Stuart Ritchie, we found that psychometric intelligence reduces the levels of fundamentalist belief amongst religious people. This received news coverage.

Some other helpful pages

Societies

Students

References cited above Full CV here

Bibliography
1. Bates, T. C. and Eysenck, H. J. (1993). Intelligence, inspection time, and decision time. Intelligence, 17. 523-531.
2. Bates, T. C. and Eysenck, H. J. (1993). String length, attention & intelligence: Focused attention reverses the string length-IQ relationship. Personality and Individual Differences, 15. 363-371.
3. Bates, T. C., Stough, C., Mangan, G. and Pellett, O. (1995). Intelligence and Complexity of the Averaged Evoked Potential - an Attentional Theory. Intelligence, 20. 27-39.
4. Bates, T. C. and D'Oliveiro, L. (2003). PsyScript: A Macintosh Application for Scripting Experiments. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35. 565-576.
5. Bates, T. C. and Shieles, A. (2003). Crystallized Intelligence as a product of Speed and Drive for Experience: The Relationship of Inspection Time and Openness to g and Gc. Intelligence, 31. 275-287.
6. Bates, T. C. and Rock, A. (2004). Extraversion and processing speed: separable influence on intelligent behaviour. Intelligence, 32. 33-46.
7. Bates, T. C. (2005). The panmodal sensory imprecision hypothesis of schizophrenia: reduced auditory precision in schizotypy. Personality & Individual Differences, 38. 437-449. doi.
8. Bates, T. C., Luciano, M., Castles, A., Coltheart, M., Wright, M. J. and Martin, N. G. (2007). Replication of reported linkages for dyslexia and spelling and suggestive evidence for novel regions on chromosomes 4 and 17. Eur J Hum Genet, 15. 194-203. link.
9. Bates, T. C., Castles, A., Luciano, M., Wright, M., Coltheart, M. and Martin, N. (2007). Genetic and environmental bases of reading and spelling: A unified genetic dual route model. Reading and Writing, 20. 147-171. doi. link.
10. Bates, T. C. (2007). Fluctuating asymmetry and intelligence. Intelligence, 35. 41-46. doi.
11. Bates, T. C., Price, J. F., Harris, S. E., Marioni, R. E., Fowkes, F. G., Stewart, M. C., Murray, G. D., Whalley, L. J., Starr, J. M. and Deary, I. J. (2009). Association of KIBRA and memory. Neurosci Lett, 458. 140-143. doi. link.
12. Bates, T. C., Lind, P. A., Luciano, M., Montgomery, G. W., Martin, N. G. and Wright, M. J. (2010). Dyslexia and DYX1C1: deficits in reading and spelling associated with a missense mutation. Molecular Psychiatry, 15. 1190-1196. doi. link.
13. Bates, T. C., Luciano, M., Medland, S. E., Montgomery, G. W., Wright, M. J. and Martin, N. G. (2011). Genetic Variance in a Component of the Language Acquisition Device: ROBO1 Polymorphisms Associated with Phonological Buffer Deficits. Behav Genet, 41. 50–57. doi. link.
14. Castles, A., Bates, T. C., Luciano, M., Martin, N. G. and Coltheart, M. (2005). Two different sets of genes for reading (and spelling). Australian Journal of Psychology, 57. 47-47.
15. Hope, D., Bates, T. C., Penke, L., Gow, A., Starr, J. M. and Deary, I. J. (2011). Fluctuating Asymmetry and Personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 50. 49-52. doi.
16. Hope, D., Bates, T., Penke, L., Gow, A. J., Starr, J. M. and Deary, I. J. (2011). Symmetry of the face in old age reflects childhood social status. Economics and human biologydoi. link.
17. Hughes, L. E., Bates, T. C. and Aimola Davies, A. (2004). Grasping at sticks: pseudoneglect for perception but not action. Exp Brain Res, 157. 397-402. doi.
18. Hughes, L. E., Bates, T. C. and Aimola Davies, A. M. (2005). The effects of local and global processing demands on perception and action. Brain and Cognition, 59. 71-81. doi. link.
19. Hughes, L. E., Bates, T. C. and Aimola Davies, A. M. (2008). Dissociations in rod bisection: the effect of viewing conditions on perception and action. Cortex, 44. 1279-1287. doi. link.
20. Lewis, G. J. and Bates, T. C. (2011). From Left to Right: How the personality system allows basic traits to influence politics via characteristic moral adaptations. British Journal of Psychologydoi.
21. Lewis, G. J. and Bates, T. C. (2011). A common heritable factor influences prosocial obligations across multiple domains. Biology Letters10.1098/rsbl.2010.1187. doi.
22. Lind, P., Luciano, M., Duffy, D., Castles, A., Wright, M. J., Martin, N. G. and Bates, T. C. (2009). Dyslexia and DCDC2: normal variation in reading and spelling is associated with DCDC2 polymorphisms in an Australian population sample. European Journal of Human Genetics, 18. 668-673. doi. link.
23. Luciano, M., Lind, P. A., Duffy, D. L., Castles, A., Wright, M. J., Montgomery, G. W., Martin, N. G. and Bates, T. C. (2007). A haplotype spanning KIAA0319 and TTRAP is associated with normal variation in reading and spelling ability. Biological Psychiatry, 62. 811-817. doi.
24. Mekel-Bobrov, N., Posthuma, D., Gilbert, S. L., Lind, P., Gosso, M. F., Luciano, M., Harris, S. E., Bates, T. C., Polderman, T. J. C., Whalley, L. J., Fox, H., Starr, J. M., Evans, P. D., Montgomery, G. W., Fernandes, C., Heutink, P., Martin, N. G., Boomsma, D. I., Deary, I. J., Wright, M. J., de Geus, E. J. C. and Lahn, B. T. (2007). The ongoing adaptive evolution of ASPM and Microcephalin is not explained by increased intelligence. Human Molecular Genetics, 16. 600-608. doi.
25. Martin, N. W., Benyamin, B., Hansell, N. K., Montgomery, G. W., Martin, N. G., Wright, M. J. and Bates, T. C. (2011). Cognitive function in adolescence: testing for interactions between breast-feeding and FADS2 polymorphisms. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 50. 55-62 e54. doi. link.
26. Penke, L., Bates, T. C., Gow, A. J., Pattie, A., Starr, J. M., Jones, B. C., Perrett, D. I. and Deary, I. J. (2009). Symmetric faces are a sign of successful cognitive aging. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30. 429-437. [<Go to ISI>:000271225600006 link].
27. Stough, C., Kerkin, B., Bates, T. C. and Mangan, G. (1994). Music and spatial IQ. //Personality & Individual Differences, 17. 695.
28. Stough, C., Mangan, G., Bates, T. C., Frank, N., Kerkin, B. and Pellett, O. (1995). Effects of Nicotine On Perceptual Speed. Psychopharmacology, 119. 305-310.
29. Stough, C. K., Bates, T. C., Nathan, P. and Thompson, J. (1999). The role of the neurotransmitter Acetylcholine in Inspection Time. European Neuropsychopharmacology, 9. S356.
30. Stough, C. K., Thompson, J. C., Bates, T. C. and Nathan, P. (2001). Examining Neurochemical Determinants of Inspection Time: Development of a Biological Model. Intelligence511-522.
31. Weiss, A., Bates, T. C. and Luciano, M. (2008). Happiness is a personal(ity) thing: the genetics of personality and well-being in a representative sample. Psychological Science, 19. 205-210. doi.
32. Wuthrich, V. M. and Bates, T. C. (2001). Schizotypy & Latent Inhibition: non-linear linkage between psychometric and cognitive markers. Personality & Individual Differences, 30. 783-798.
33. Wuthrich, V. M. and Bates, T. C. (2004). Schizotypy and eye movement dysfunction: Separate markers for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 67. 136-136.
34. Wuthrich, V. M. and Bates, T. C. (2005). Reliability and validity of two Likert versions of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). Personality and Individual Differences, 38. 1543-1548. 10.1016/J.Paid.2004.09.017 doi. [<Go to ISI>:000228593900005 link].
35. Wuthrich, V. M. and Bates, T. C. (2006). Confirmatory factor analysis of the three-factor structure of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire and Chapman schizotypy scales. //Journal of Personality Assessment, 87. 292-304. [<Go to ISI>://000242818200009 link].
page revision: 52, last edited: 02 May 2012 10:49
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