Developmental Progression of Clock Face Drawing in Children

The clock drawing test has been routinely administered by many neuropsychologists as part of their testing battery with the adult population. Our study investigated the development of clock face drawing in normal children ages 6 to 12 years. Conceptualization of time and construction of the clock face were assessed by an adapted scoring system developed as part of the investigation. As a group, the results indicated an upward progression with regard to the concept of time through age 8 and clock construction through age 12. Results further demonstrated that number reversals were more frequent among left-handers but were no longer evident by age 7 regardless of handedness. It also was determined that left visuospatial neglect specific to the upper quadrant was relatively common in 6- and 7-year olds but not evidenced by age 8. Given the pattern of the findings, it is likely that the neglect was secondary to poor planning and not a visuo-spatial deficit. In general, development of clock face drawing most closely paralleled that of frontal lobe maturation. Implications of these findings and the usefulness of clock face drawing with the pediatric population are presented.     

Cultural differences in drawing movements between right-handed Japanese and German participants

Differences in drawing movements with the dominant and nondominant hands by 41 right-handed students from Japan (9 men, 12 women; M age = 20.3 yr., SD = 1.4) and Germany (13 men, 7 women; M age = 23.4 yr., SD = 3.0) were investigated. Participants were asked to use each hand to draw a circle, a pentagon, and a rhombus in one stroke. Analysis showed that Japanese participants drew a circle clockwise with the dominant right hand, starting from 6 or 7 o'clock on the face of a clock, while the German participants drew the circle counterclockwise, starting from 11 or 12 o'clock. Moreover, when drawing a pentagon and a rhombus with the right hand, Japanese participants drew counterclockwise from the top-center vertex, whereas almost half of German participants drew clockwise from the left side and others drew counterclockwise from the top-center vertex. Using the left hand, no significant difference was found in starting positions or directionality. Cultural differences in the starting positions and directionality when using the dominant right hand probably reflect the influence of writing habits on the drawing movement of the dominant hand.     

Clock drawing in spatial neglect: A comprehensive analysis of clock perimeter, placement, and accuracy

Clock drawings produced by right-brain-damaged (RBD) individuals with spatial neglect often contain an abundance of empty space on the left while numbers and hands are placed on the right. However, the clock perimeter is rarely compromised in neglect patients' drawings. By analysing clock drawings produced by 71 RBD and 40 healthy adults, this study investigated whether the geometric characteristics of the clock perimeter reveal novel insights to understanding spatial neglect. Neglect participants drew smaller clocks than either healthy or non-neglect RBD participants. While healthy participants' clock perimeter was close to circular, RBD participants drew radially extended ellipses. The mechanisms for these phenomena were investigated by examining the relation between clock-drawing characteristics and performance on six subtests of the Behavioral Inattention Test (BIT). The findings indicated that the clock shape was independent of any BIT subtest or the drawing placement on the test sheet and that the clock size was significantly predicted by one BIT subtest: the poorer the figure and shape copying, the smaller the clock perimeter. Further analyses revealed that in all participants, clocks decreased in size as they were placed farther from the centre of the paper. However, even when neglect participants placed their clocks towards the centre of the page, they were smaller than those produced by healthy or non-neglect RBD participants. These results suggest a neglect-specific reduction in the subjectively available workspace for graphic production from memory, consistent with the hypothesis that neglect patients are impaired in the ability to enlarge the attentional aperture.     

Developmental changes in face recognition during childhood: Evidence from upright and inverted faces

Adults are experts at recognizing faces but there is controversy about how this ability develops with age. We assessed 6- to 12-year-olds and adults using a digitized version of the Benton Face Recognition Test, a sensitive tool for assessing face perception abilities. Children's response times for correct responses did not decrease between ages 6 and 12, for either upright or inverted faces, but were significantly longer than those of adults for both face types. Accuracy improved between ages 6 and 12, significantly more for upright than inverted faces. Inverted face recognition improved slowly until late childhood, whereas there was a large improvement in upright face recognition between ages 6 and 8, with a further enhancement after age 12. These results provide further evidence that during childhood face processing undergoes protracted development and becomes increasingly tuned to upright faces.     

Le développement des capacités de jugement des durées chez l'enfant

For several decades, since the work of Piaget, it has been believed that correct judgements of durations require sophisticated reasoning abilities that emerge at about 8 years of age. However, some researchers have demonstrated accurate temporal knowledge in young children and have explained their poor judgements on classical piagetian tasks not by their inability to correctly judge time, but by age-related attentional difficulties. Recently, researchers have thus reassessed the temporal behaviour in children with the experimental paradigms used in animals and humans adults in the framework of the temporal information processing models that assume the existence of an internal clock. Findings suggest that this type of clock is functional at an early age. Other findings allow us to better understand the role of the development of attention, memory and metacognitive processes in the development of the abilities to judge time. The aim of this article is to synthesize these recent findings.     

Non-lateralised deficits of drawing production in hemispatial neglect

Spatially lateralised deficits that typically define the hemispatial neglect syndrome have been shown to co-occur with other non-lateralised deficits of attention, memory, and drawing. However even a simple graphic task involves multiple planning components, including the specification of drawing start position and drawing direction. In order to investigate the influence of these factors in neglect we presented patients with a circle-copying task, and specified the drawing start point. The ability to draw from the instructed location was strongly related to tests that measure constructional abilities, but not related to start point laterality. In contrast, the direction in which patients drew the circle was affected by start point laterality: patients with neglect were less likely to draw in a typical direction when the cue was on the affected side of space and this was strongly related to severity of the neglect. Patients with neglect consistently produced circles that were smaller than the model; however, the scaling was not affected by the laterality of the start point, nor was the proportion of drawings correctly started at the cue. These findings demonstrate the complex relationship between neglect and even the simplest test for the syndrome.     

What do children look at in an adult face with which they are personally familiar?

Adults recognize familiar faces better by their internal than external face parts. It is not clear when children achieve this internal face part advantage, however, previous research has suggested that it emerges after the age of seven years. The present study was the first study to show personally familiar adult faces (school staff) to children aged 5–6, 7–8 and 10–11 years, and we asked the children to identify which faces were familiar. An internal face part advantage was found at all ages.     

Beyond U-Shaped Development in Infants' Processing of Faces: An Information-Processing Account

The development of the "inversion" effect in face processing was examined in infants 3 to 6 months of age by testing their integration of the internal and external features of upright and inverted faces using a variation of the "switch" visual habituation paradigm. When combined with previous findings showing that 7-month-olds use integrative processing of an upright face, but featural processing of an inverted face (Cohen & Cashon, 2001a), the present findings suggest that from 3 to 7 months, infants' ability to integrate facial features follows an N-shaped developmental pattern for upright faces and an inverted U-shaped pattern for inverted faces. We discuss these results in terms of a set of domain-general information-processing principles.     

Early neuropsychological correlates of later clock drawing and clock copying abilities among school aged children.

Although widely used in empirical study and bedside neuropsychological evaluation of geriatric populations, there is little literature on clock copying and drawing among children. However, existing research suggests that clock drawing tests (CDTs) may be effective and efficient tools for assessing neurocognitive development in children. This paper reports data on clock drawing on demand (CDT-D) and clock drawing to copy (CDT-C) among a non-clinical sample of elementary school aged children and identifies predictive relationships between earlier measures of executive function, visuo-construction, and visual-motor coordination and CDT performance 3 years later. Similar to findings with adult samples, analyses revealed better performance on copying than on drawing. Longitudinal analyses indicate that general intelligence significantly predicted performance on both tasks. Visual-motor coordination only predicted performance on the drawing on demand subtest of the CDT.     

The influence of stimulus array on training of a speeded response

We conducted two experiments to study the training of speeded responses to stimuli in a clock face array. Participants were trained on one clock face and later tested on either the same or a different clock face. The clock faces varied along 3 dimensions of change (left-right flip, up-down flip, and 180 degrees rotation). Skill acquisition was reflected in decreases in overall, initiation, and movement response times in the training and test phases except that movement time reached an asymptote during training and did not decrease further during test. Test performance was best when training and test used the same clock face and worst when the training to test change involved an up-down flip. The transition to different clock faces was consistent with an interpretation based on the violation of expectations about target positions acquired during training. Consistent trial-by-trial feedback led to better initiation time but not movement time during training than periodic feedback, but this effect did not persist into the test phase.     

A Longitudinal Study of Semantic Grouping Strategy Use in 6–11-Year-Old Children: Investigating Developmental Phases,the Role of Working Memory,and Strategy Transfer

This two-cohort longitudinal study on the development of the semantic grouping strategy had three goals. First, the authors examined if 6–7-year-olds are nonstrategic before becoming strategic after prompting at 8–9 years of age, and if 8–9-year-olds are prompted strategic before spontaneous strategy use at 10–11 years of age. Children 6–7 and 8–9 years old performed two sort-recall tasks (one without and one with a grouping prompt) at two time points separated 1.5 years from each other. Second, the authors investigated whether short-term or working memory capacity at time point 1 predicted recall in children who did or did not use the semantic grouping strategy 1.5 years later. Third, the authors investigated whether prompted strategic children and children who used the strategy spontaneously differed in strategy transfer to a new task. Developmental results confirmed previous cross-sectional results, but in a longitudinal two-cohort study 6–7-year-olds were nonstrategic, and became prompted strategic around 8–9 years of age, followed by spontaneous strategy use at age 10–11 years. The authors found that memory capacity was not predictive of later use of the strategy. New findings were that prompted strategic children were as equally able as spontaneously strategic children to transfer the strategy to a new task, albeit with smaller recall benefits.     

The influence of dominant versus non-dominant hand on event and emergent motor timing

It has been hypothesized that timing in tapping utilizes event timing; a clock-like process, whereas timing in circle drawing is emergent. Three experiments examined timing in tapping and circle drawing by the dominant and non-dominant hand. Participants were right-hand dominant college aged males and females. The relationship between variance and the square of the timed interval (the Weber fraction), thought to capture clock-like timekeeping processes, was compared. Furthermore, timing variance was decomposed into a clock and a motor component. The slopes for timing were different for dominant hand tapping and circle drawing, but equal for non-dominant and dominant hand tapping. Negative lag one covariance, consistent with motor implementation variability, was found for non-dominant but not for dominant hand circle drawing (Experiment 1). Practice did not influence this relation (Experiment 2). A significant correlation for clock variability was found between non-dominant hand circle drawing and tapping (Experiment 3). Collectively, these findings indicate that event timing is shareable across hands while emergent timing is specific to an effector. Emergent timing does not appear to be obligatory for the non-dominant hand in circle drawing. We suggest that the use of emergent timing might depend upon the extensive practice experienced by a person's dominant hand.     

A Study of Young Artists: The Development of Artistic Talent and Creativity

ABSTRACT: This study explored the development of talent and creativity in a population of 60 children (kindergarten through 5th grade) enrolled in a private art-enrichment program. The population of highly motivated and highly reinforced children offered an opportunity to explore the relations among the following hypothesized components of creativity: motivation, knowledge, problem finding, ideation, evaluation, age, and context. The children were videotaped while they created solutions to 2 artistic and 3 puzzle-like activities; the observed behavior provided scores on problem finding, evaluation, and ideation. In addition, 3 artists scored the 2 drawing tasks on knowledge and ideation. Age was correlated significantly with knowledge in both drawing situations, but the relations between age and problem finding, ideation, and evaluation depended on the variable used, the problem situation, or both. In one drawing situation, controlling for technical expertise resulted in a curvilinear relation between novelty and age. The pattern of relationships among the components also differed with the drawing situation. The context, or problem situation, also interacted with the contributions of age, evaluation, and problem finding in the prediction of novelty. Multiple linear regressions of assessments of knowledge and ideation on the assessed novelty of both drawings revealed the significance of expressivity and composition in predicting novelty. The findings are discussed within the context of a developmental theory.     

Position of the Egocentric Reference and Directional Arm Movements in Right-Brain-Damaged Patients

We asked 12 right-brain-damaged patients (6 with left neglect signs and 6 without left neglect signs) to perform a straight ahead pointing task and a visual detection task with lateralized motor response, in order to investigate the relationship between the position of the egocentric reference and response time and accuracy in producing lateralized arm movements. Results showed that there was no correlation between the position of the egocentric reference and neglect signs, nor between the position of the egocentric reference and the latencies to direct a motor response toward either side of space. These findings were interpreted within the context of egocentric hypotheses of neglect. In particular, it was suggested that attentional or intentional neglect signs cannot be considered as a direct consequence of an ipsilesional deviation of the egocentric reference.     

Pathways From Depressive Symptoms to Low Social Status

This research examined two pathways through which depressive symptoms contribute to low social status (i.e., neglect and rejection) within the peer group over time: (a) depressive symptoms promote socially helpless behavior and consequent neglect by peers; and (b) depressive symptoms promote aggressive behavior and consequent rejection by peers. These pathways were investigated in independent samples of youth at two developmental stages: middle childhood (2nd–4th grade) and early adolescence (5th–7th grade). In both Study 1 (M age?=?7.97, SD?=?0.37; 338 girls, 298 boys) and Study 2 (M age?=?11.74, SD?=?0.68; 305 girls, 300 boys), youth and their teachers completed questionnaires at three waves. Multi-group comparison path analyses were conducted to examine sex differences in the models. Consistent with expectations, two pathways emerged through which depressive symptoms undermined subsequent social status. Support was not found for the reverse direction of effect nor for developmental or sex differences in the pathways with one exception: In early adolescence, neglect directly predicted depressive symptoms. These findings suggest specificity but also heterogeneity in the effects of depressive symptoms on social status, and identify behaviors that may be targeted for preventing the persistence of depression and its interpersonal consequences.     

儿童忽视与同伴接受：消极社会行为的中介作用

运用问卷调查法和同伴提名法,考察小学4、5年级共503名儿童的消极社会行为（攻击行为、退缩行为、受欺负行为）、同伴接受和儿童忽视间的关系。结果发现,儿童忽视与退缩行为、受欺负行为之间存在显著正相关,与攻击行为之间相关不显著;儿童忽视与同伴接受有显著负相关。忽视通过消极社会行为的两组中介变量作用于儿童的同伴接受。     

Fearful faces drive gaze‐cueing and threat bias effects in children on the lookout for danger

Most developmental studies of face emotion processing show faces in isolation, in the absence of any broader context. Here we investigate two types of interactions between expression and threat contexts. First, in adults, following of another person's direction of social attention is increased when that person shows fear and the context requires vigilance for danger. We investigate whether this also occurs in children. Using a Posner‐style eye‐gaze cueing paradigm, we tested whether children would show greater gaze‐cueing from fearful than happy expressions when the task was to be vigilant for possible dangerous animals. Testing across the 8–12‐year‐old age range, we found this fear priority effect was absent in the youngest children but developed to reach adult levels in the oldest children. However, even the oldest children were unable to sustain fear‐prioritization when the onset of the target was delayed. Second, we addressed the development of ‘threat bias’ – namely faster identification of dangerous animals than safe animals – in the social context provided by expressive faces. In our non‐anxious samples (i.e. with typical‐population levels of anxiety), adults showed a threat bias regardless of the expression or looking direction of the just‐seen cue face whereas 8–12‐year‐olds only showed a threat bias when the just‐seen cue face displayed fear. Overall, the results argue that some, but not all, aspects of expression–context interactions are mature by 12 years of age.     

Exploring the perceptual spaces of faces, cars and birds in children and adults

While much developmental research has focused on the strategies that children employ to recognize faces, less is known about the principles governing the organization of face exemplars in perceptual memory. In this study, we tested a novel, child-friendly paradigm for investigating the organization of face, bird and car exemplars. Children ages 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12 and adults were presented with 50/50 morphs of typical and atypical face, bird and car parent images. Participants were asked to judge whether the 50/50 morph more strongly resembled the typical or the atypical parent image. Young and older children and adults showed a systematic bias to the atypical faces and birds, but no bias toward the atypical cars. Collectively, these findings argue that by the age of 3, children encode and organize faces, birds and cars in a perceptual space that is strikingly similar to that of adults. Category organization for both children and adults follows Krumhansl's (1978) distance-density principle in which the similarity between two exemplars is jointly determined by their physical appearance and the density of neighboring exemplars in the perceptual space.     

Infants' responsiveness to line junctions in curved objects

Several empirical studies demonstrate that infants under 6-7 months of age are unable to extract static-monocular depth information from their environment. The aim of this study was to extend these findings by using a three-dimensional structure indicated by curved Y junctions. Infants 5 and 8 months of age were habituated to the line drawing of a cylinder. During test trials, the infants viewed two displays, one in which a surface marking had been deleted from the habituation figure and one in which an edge had been erased. An ANOVA revealed that the 8-month-old subjects looked significantly longer at the dishabituation display lacking the edge, whereas the 5-month-olds did not. The results provide evidence that 8-month-old infants distinguish between lines indicating edges and lines indicating markings and that they are able to use line junctions to perceive line drawings as depictions of three-dimensional objects in the picture plane.     

"Clockness" in the detection of dementia: a semantic-conceptual effect

We studied aspects of clock cognition that might underlie the sensitivity of the CDT in screening for dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT). Two groups, 15 patients with mild-moderate DAT and 15 controls, were assessed with the CDT and specially designed tests of clock-related cognition. Patients were impaired on the CDT, but they did not differ from controls in copying a clock face or selecting the correct representation of a given time. Patients were worse than controls at distinguishing between clock and nonclock objects, detecting anomalies in clocks, and in setting time irrespective of response format. These findings suggest that semantic-conceptual aspects of clock-related cognition are important in discriminating between patients with DAT and controls.