Short-term memory for two meaningful stories and self-report on the adult Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.

Abstract

A possible relationship for four constructs of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire with the immediate recall of two verbal memory tasks is explored. Statistical treatment of data for 226 female and for 189 male adult clients involved multiple regression, principal axis factor analyses, and a numerical comparison of recalled unit memories by low, medium, and high scorers on Psychoticism, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and the Lie scales. Highest numbers of immediately recalled unit memories of prose were associated with low and medium Psychoticism, medium and high Extraversion, low Neuroticism for men, medium Neuroticism for women, high score on Lie for men but a low to medium score for women. The first varimax rotated factor for men's data and also for women's data suggested a close relationship between memory performance and low scores on Psychoticism, Neuroticism, and for men, a high score on Lie. The second varimax rotated factor had no association with memory performance, but identified women scoring high on Psychoticism, men and women scoring low on Extraversion, women scoring high on Neuroticism, men scoring low on Neuroticism, and women scoring low on the Lie scales. Implications for the presence of a general intelligence factor and a clinical pathology factor were discussed.