fixed effects correlated with the intercept

Is'nt this what might be expected.  Center the covariate about
its mean and, depending on the detailed variance-covariance
structure, the correlation may well reduce to zero.
...
[snip useful demonstration]
...
the correlation can be made arbitrarily close to -1 or 1,
respectively.

Thanks, this explains a lot.  I also appreciate the general point
about thinking in terms of lm when trying to reason about the fixed
effects in a model.

What do you mean when you say "I have two covariates that I consider
to be controls in my model." Do you mean that these code for
observations that you are treating as controls?  Or what?

I guess more precise terms might be "post-hoc controls" or "possible
confounds".  Our stimulus selection process did not take into account
certain properties of the stimuli that may have influenced the
observed behavior.  By adding these properties into the model as
post-hoc controls we can test whether the factors of interest have a
significant effect on the observed behavior even when these other
properties of the stimuli are accounted for.

Thanks again,
/au

Austin Frank
http://aufrank.net
GPG Public Key (D7398C2F): http://aufrank.net/personal.asc