[R-sig-ME] lmer and autocorrelation structures

[Douglas Bates]

On 9/6/07, Chris O'Brien <obrienc at email.arizona.edu> wrote:
> Dear mixed-modelers,

> I'm interested in modelling a dataset using generalized linear mixed models
> (specifying "family=binomial" with random effects) in which there is
> temporal autocorrelation in the response. Is there a way to do this in the
> new lme4 package?  I've used the "correlation" argument in the nlme library
> to specify a correlation structure for least-square means regression, but
> this option appears not to be implemented in the new lmer call in the lme4
> package.   Is such a thing possible (and appropriate) at this time?
> thanks,

Possible, but only in the fortune("Yoda") sense.  In other words that
capability is not built into the lme4 package.

I don't think we can comment on the appropriateness of the model
without more information and perhaps a look at the data.  However,
until someone writes the code to incorporate an autoregressive
structure into lmer, the question is moot.