Psychoticism, creativity and dichotic shadowing

Thirty Ss were presented with pairs of words simultaneously under the instruction to shadow one ear while ignoring the other (the Focused Attention condition) or to shadow one ear while attempting to remember the other (the Divided Attention condition). Ss also completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and two tests of creativity from the Wallach and Kogan battery. It was hypothesized that Ss high on EPQ Psychoticism and on creativity should make more shadowing errors of omission and intrusion. Creative Ss made significantly more errors of intrusion under the divided attention condition, but Ss scoring high on the Similarities subtest showed significantly fewer errors in the Focussed Attention condition. An ‘impulsivity’ interpretation of the data is tentatively advanced, and it is shown how this interpretation may explain a number of the anomalous findings in the psychoticism literature.