Effects of gender and personality on the Conners Continuous Performance Test

Abstract

A total of 91 university community participants were evaluated on the five personality factors (NEO-Five Factor Inventory; NEO-FFI) and with the Conners Continuous Performance Test (CPT). Gender differences for the Conners CPT variables were found such that the men were faster and less variable in their reaction times than the women, and the women were more sensitive in terms of signal detection and conservative in their responses than the men, consistent with the data reported by Conners, Epstein, Angold, and Klaric (2003) for a normative sample of 9-18 year olds. Interesting relationships between personality factors and the CPT variables were seen for the male and female groups, especially in terms of response style and vigilance. For the combined genders, higher vigilance was associated with higher neuroticism, lower extraversion, and lower agreeableness. Lower conscientiousness was associated with a more risk-taking/less conservative response bias. The men were more vigilant than the women, and for the men, this higher vigilance was related to lower conscientiousness, with trends for relationships with greater neuroticism and lower agreeableness. In the women, higher vigilance was related to lower extraversion, consistent with other studies. Men who were more extraverted also tended to be less conservative/more risk taking in their response style. A more risk-taking response style in women was associated with higher neuroticism, higher openness, and lower conscientiousness. The findings are interpreted in terms of underlying biological bases of behavior.

Neuropsychological Correlates of Transcription Factor AP-2Beta, and Its Interaction with COMT and MAOA in Healthy Females

“…Subjects with more conservative bias, on the other hand, want to be rather sure that a degraded stimulus is unambiguously a correct target. The present correlational findings are in line with the literature: Burton et al [32] found that neuroticism is negatively correlated with the decision bias β. Furthermore, they also found that in females the bias is negatively correlated with openness: higher scores of openness are associated with more liberal decisions.…”

Absorbed in the task: Personality measures predict engagement during task performance as tracked by error negativity and asymmetrical frontal activity

“…Although some of the effects did not reach significance, together they strongly suggest that, with time on task, constraint was related to relatively higher engagement, reflecting conservative strategies to prevent increased error rates (Burton et al, 2009). Constraint also was related to left RFA, a less pronounced increase in sadness during the task, and higher vigor before and especially after the task.…”

Effects of age and gender on performance on Conners' Continuous Performance Test in Brazilian adolescents.

“…"Sex differences become more pronounced during the period of adolescence, concomitant with the hormonal changes of puberty, with females being more efficient than males in tasks of selective attention, verbal fluency and conductive reasoning" (Rubia, Hyde, Halari, GIampietro, & Smith, 2010, p. 817). However, Burton et al (2010) found relationships between personality factors and CPT variables in the male and female groups, especially in terms of response style and vigilance.…”

“…They found effects of gender, age, and educational level only for Hit RT and detectability (d') scores. Burton et al (2010) used the CCPT and found gender differences on measures of RT, commission errors, and d' and β indices.…”