Question about lrandom effects specification in lme4
Folks: Suppose I have 3 random effects, A,B, and C. Using the older lme() function (in nlme) it was possible (using the pdMat classes) to specify that they are uncorrelated with identical variances. Is it possible to do this with lmer? My understanding is that if I specify them as lmer( y ~ ... + (A|Grp) + (B|Grp) + (C|Grp)) then they are uncorrelated but have different variances. Motivation: I'd like to use lmer instead of lme for fitting smoothing splines to longitudinal data. Cheers, Bert Gunter Genentech