ИСТИНА

Despite the fact that widely used temperament questionnaires (for example, Eyesenck’s EPI, Strelau’s Pavlovian temperament survey) are based on different theoretical approaches, their dimensions are usually interrelated in a strict way, i.e. their scales correlate with each other in a regular manner [Rusalov 1990, Strelau 2009]. But this is not always the case, and for some subjects data obtained by different questionnaires give discordant results [Ramendik 2010, 2008]. The nature of this irregularity is unclear, and the aim of the present study was to investigate the electroencephalographic correlates of such discordance. The study was performed in 30 university students aged 18-27 years (20 females and 10 males). All participants completed 3 questionnaires: Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) [Eysenck, 1982; Shmelyov, 2002], Pavlovian Temperament Survey (PTS) [Strelau et al., 1999], and Structure of Temperament Questionnaire (STQ) [Rusalov, 1990, 2002]. According to the interrelations between dimensions of different questionnaire, participants were divided into 2 subgroups: "concordant" and "discordant". In "concordant" ones the three questionnaires showed a greater amount of match between dimensions, which are known to be correlated. In the "discordant" group, data obtained from those questionnaires gave controversial results. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded under active odd-ball 2-stimulus paradigm: subjects were instructed to press a joystick button after a rare target, which had higher pitch. 16 subjects were assigned to the "concordant" group, 14 — to the "discordant" one. All participants performed the pitch discrimination task equally good: there were almost no response omissions or wrong responses and response latencies did not differ amongst the groups. "Concordant" participants were discovered to have higher scores in Mobility (PTS), social-related and object-related Ergonicity and Tempo (STQ) scales in comparison to "discordant" subjects. "Concordant" subjects showed higher amplitude of the N2-P3 complex of the auditory ERP (p=0.002). Although some significant correlations between ERPs components amplitude and scales of questionnaires were found, none of them included the N2-P3 complex, thus suggesting that difference in the N2-P3 amplitude is not related to the known dimensions measured by 3 used questionnaires. Late components of the ERPs (N2, P3) are believed to reflect different aspects of stimulus identification, cognitive control and attention process. Taking into account that amplitude of an ERP component may reflect the extent of brain resource allocation to a particular task [Kok, 2001] it is possible to assume that in the "discordant" subjects performance of the attention task recruited less brain resources than in the "concordant" people.