tim.bates@ed.ac.uk Room: G24 Telephone: +44.131.651-1945
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Research Group: Differential Psychology
If you like the kind of things I do, you might also like the Psychology and Philosophy Interest GroupResearch Overview
| Genetics of Communication | Positive Psychology | Genetics of Cognition |
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Our work on reading has lead two principle discoveries. The first was evidence for two genetically distinct forms of dyslexia: reading, related to processing of smaller elements of words, perhaps equivalent to grapheme-phone rule learning, and one restricted to the processing of whole words - perhaps a lexical system. Our second principle finding was that reading disorder forms a genetic continuum from excellent reading, across the normal range, too severe dyslexia. Put simply, we found that genes for normal variation in reading are the same as those responsible for responsible for clinical dyslexia. This work appeared in the European Journal of Human Genetics and the Sunday Times. At a molecular level, we identified novel genetic regions for dyslexia, and demonstrated that the genes KIAA03109 and DCDC2 are related to reading and spelling. Some public-science out reach on this work appears here: |
Positive psychology 
Positive psychology is the scientific study of factors underlying successful living: What Aristotle would have called the good life. Our work (With key collaborators Alex Weiss and Michelle Luciano) has lead to the surprising finding that not-only are differences in happiness (specifically life-long subjective well-being) in part genetic, but these genetic differences are entirely explained by personality. This work appeared in Psychological Science, and with a very accessible summary in this article appearing in Time Magazine written by Laura Blue. We are currently investigating the role of virtuous practice in raising long term achievement via habitual personality changes - exploiting predictions from our research that personality impacts on happiness via behavior, and that the 50-70% or personality variance which is environmental may be amenable to change. |
My third area of expertise is in cognition. We have conducted a series of studies of candidate genes linked to intelligence or brain size, most recently showing a selective association of KIBRA to forgetting (loss of learning over a 30 minute delay), with unimpaired learning (rate of acquisition over 5 learning trials). We have also worked on sex differences in ability (appearing in Intelligence), finding an absence of mean differences, but a large excess of males in both the very low and the very high extremes of the normal distribution of ability. Sex differences are of course of interest to lots of people, so this also got fairly wide media coverage. Our work examining the evolutionary history of brain volume, testing social and cognitive theories, received some kind attention at the 2008 Louisville Behavior Genetics Association, Covered in Science Magazine: BEHAVIOR GENETICS ASSOCIATION: The Sociable Brain |
Teaching
| ISIR: Editorial Board of Intelligence | BGA: Twin Research and Human Genetics |
| ISSID: Personality and Individual Differences | Learning and Individual Differences |
Previous History
I am originally from New Zealand, I came to Edinburgh via Macquarie University. There's an obscure connection:Governor Lachlan Macquarie who shaped much of the early life of Australia, and after whom Macquarie University is named, was a Scot, and returned home after his record-setting Governorship of Australia ended.
Oh: and we are located here:
Guide to living in Edinburgh
Ph.D. OpportunitiesThe normal route for entry is to our M.Sc. in Individual Differences, which can be done on its own or as the entry to doctoral study. Contact me to further explore possible topics. : Look here to view some of our funding opportunities. International Students : there is more information on coming to Edinburgh here |
