Biopsychological bases and behavioral correlates of sensation seeking: contributions to a multilevel validation

Zuckerman presented a multilevel approach of sensation seeking comprising a hierarchy of seven levels. He primarily focussed on the levels of psychome tric trait, psychophysiology and biochemistry. Because Zuckerman was less c oncerned with behavioral paradigms and experimental task performance the pu rpose of our study was to identify and validate behavioral paradigms whose behavioral components can be seen as valid indicators of the trait. But wit hin the multilevel perspective, each paradigm should not only be structured and validated in relation to its psychometric dimension but also with rega rd to at least one other level and preferably through a within-design. Thirty-two undergraduates (18 female) and graduate students took part in th e study. Subjects completed the Sensation Seeking Scale (Form V), the Impul siveness Venturesomeness Empathy Questionnaire, and the Zuckerman Kuhlman P ersonality Questionnaire and performed three experimental paradigms: the co ntinuous performance task, delayed reaction time task and the augmenting-re ducing paradigm. The classical findings on augmenting-reducing were replicated (correlation between TAS and the N1/P2 slope). On this basis the expected positive corre lation between sensation seeking and false alarms on the DRTT as a central parameter of experimental task performance was confirmed. This result is a first step to the validation of this task as a paradigm covering relevant a spects of sensation seeking. In addition, by means of communality analysis, it was shown that there is 8.6% of common variance across all three levels of measurement (psychometric, psychophysiological and experimental task pe rformance). This overlapping variance can be regarded as a core region of a multilevel sensation seeking construct if the parameters for each of the l evels of measurement involved are sufficiently validated. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.