[R] lmer() causes segfault

[Bertolt Meyer]

Hello lmer() - users,

A call to the lmer() function causes my installation of R (2.11.1 on  
Mac OS X 10.5.8) to crash and I am trying to figure out the problem.

I have a data set with longitudinal data of four subsequent  
performance measures of 1133 individuals nested in 88 groups. The data  
is in long format. I hypothesize a performance increase for each  
individual over time and intend to explain differences in these slopes  
with individual-level and group-level characteristics. Thus, I have  
hierarchic data with three levels (measurement time, individual, group).

With lme() (from the nlme package), this is my first simple model:

mod1 <- lme(fixed = performance ~ time,
			random = ~ 1 + time | GroupID/StudentNumber,
			data = dataset.long,
			na.action = na.omit)

It fits to the data well. I tried to specify the same model in lmer():

detach("package:nlme")
library(lme4)

mod1 <- lmer(performance ~ time + (time | GroupID/StudentNumber), data  
= dataset.long, na.action = na.omit)

However, this call results in a segfault:

*** caught segfault ***
address 0x154c3000, cause 'memory not mapped'

and a lengthy traceback. I can reproduce this error. It also occurs  
when I don't load nlme before lme4. Can someone tell me what I am  
doing wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated.

With best regards,
Bertolt

-- 
Dr. Bertolt Meyer
Senior research and teaching associate
Social Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Zurich
Binzmuehlestrasse 14, Box 15
CH-8050 Zurich
Switzerland

bmeyer at sozpsy.uzh.ch