Psychoticism and perceptual processing speed: A test of Robinson's theory

Robinson has argued that bias in the process of knowledge acquisition can give rise to either a differentiated or an integrated learningstyle. Individuals high on the personality dimension of psychoticism are said to have a differentiated learning style that manifests insuperior performance on cognitive tasks that require differentiation of the elements or parts of immediate perceptual experience. Totest this theory, 106 undergraduate students aged between 18 and 31 completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire'Revised,along with two computer-based measures of visual processing speed: reaction time (RT) and inspection time (IT). In accord withRobinson's theory, psychoticism scores were found to be inversely related to both mean RT and IT. Moreover, multiple regressionanalyses indicated that the relationship between psychoticism scores and the two processing speed measures was independent of anyage or gender effects. It is recommended that future research examine the relationship between psychoticism, and both poles ofRobinson's differentiation versus integration dimension.