Timothy Bates

Who is Timothy Bates?

Timothy C. Bates is a professor of individual differences in psychology at the University of Edinburgh. His current research interests include the genetics of reading and spelling, intelligence, and personality.

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 and integrated the Eysenckian dimensional model of psychosis with the categorical model of schizotypy proposed by Paul E. Meehl, using measures of personality, creativity, evoked potentials, and smooth pursuit eye movement dysfunction. He has since conducted research in individual differences, genetics, and cognitive neuropsychology, publishing nearly 100 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles.

His principal academic achievements include demonstrating the existence of two separate forms of dyslexia, underpinned by distinct genes, and, subsequently, demonstrating that the genes associated with dyslexia are also linked to normal variation in reading ability. This work evolved into searches for specific genes involved in reading and language.