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.     

Contrastive explanation and the many absences problem

We often explain by citing an absence or an omission. Apart from the problem of assigning a causal role to such apparently negative factors as absences and omissions, there is a puzzle as to why only some absences and omissions, out of indefinitely many, should figure in explanations. In this paper we solve this ’many absences problem’ by using the contrastive model of explanation. The contrastive model of explanation is developed by adapting Peter Lipton’s account. What initially appears to be only a trivial amendment to Lipton’s Difference Condition enables us both to offer a much more satisfactory solution to the ’many absences problem’ than David Lewis did, and also to explain why explanation in terms of absences and omissions should be so common.     

The Development of the 2-Way Social Support Scale: A Measure of Giving and Receiving Emotional and Instrumental Support

A number of studies support the refinement of various types of social support into 2 primary dimensions: emotional support and instrumental support. There is increasing recognition of benefits aligned with giving as well as receiving social support, yet there has been no single measure published that incorporates all of these elements. This study presents the development of the 2-Way Social Support Scale (2-Way SSS) using community samples (n = 372; n = 417) and provides evidence for the scales’ factor structure, reliability, and validity. The 2-Way SSS concurrently appraises 4 principal dimensions: (a) giving emotional support, (b) giving instrumental support, (c) receiving emotional support, and (d) receiving instrumental support. The completeness of the scale, combined with the generic quality of the items, enhances its utility across a diversity of contexts. Importantly, this scale provides a measurement tool that will enable the comparison of social support research outcomes across studies and populations.     

Predictors of posttraumatic stress in children following injury: The influence of appraisals, heart rate, and morphine use

Prospective studies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children that investigate simultaneously both cognitive and biological or psychophysiological predictors are rare. The present research reports on the impact of cognitive factors (trauma-related appraisals) and biological indicators (heart rate, morphine use) in predicting PTSD and depression symptoms following single-incident trauma. Children and adolescents (N = 48) were assessed within 4 weeks of an injury that led to hospital treatment and followed up 6-months later. While morphine did not predict initial PTSD severity, it was associated with lower levels of PTSD at follow-up. Reductions in PTSD symptoms (change scores) between assessments were similarly associated with morphine dosage. Trauma-related appraisals also contributed to PTSD and depression symptom severity. While slightly different patterns of results were obtained depending on whether static or change scores were examined, as a whole the study adds to a growing literature that morphine has the potential to reduce PTSD symptoms severity. Likewise the relationship between unhelpful trauma appraisals and posttrauma psychopathology was replicated.     

Behavioral distraction by auditory novelty is not only about novelty: The role of the distracter’s informational value

Unexpected events often distract us. In the laboratory, novel auditory stimuli have been shown to capture attention away from a focal visual task and yield specific electrophysiological responses as well as a behavioral cost to performance. Distraction is thought to follow ineluctably from the sound’s low probability of occurrence or, put more simply, its unexpected occurrence. Our study challenges this view with respect to behavioral distraction and argues that past research failed to identify the informational value of sound as a mediator of novelty distraction. We report an experiment showing that (1) behavioral novelty distraction is only observed when the sound announces the occurrence and timing of an upcoming visual target (as is the case in all past research); (2) that no such distraction is observed for deviant sounds conveying no such information; and that (3) deviant sounds can actually facilitate performance when these, but not the standards, convey information. We conclude that behavioral novelty distraction, as observed in oddball tasks, is observed in the presence of novel sounds but only when the cognitive system can take advantage of the auditory distracters to optimize performance.     

The roles of private speech and inner speech in planning during middle childhood: Evidence from a dual task paradigm

Children often talk themselves through their activities, producing private speech that is internalized to form inner speech. This study assessed the effect of articulatory suppression (which suppresses private and inner speech) on Tower of London performance in 7- to 10-year-olds, relative to performance in a control condition with a nonverbal secondary task. Experiment 1 showed no effect of articulatory suppression on performance with the standard Tower of London procedure; we interpret this in terms of a lack of planning in our sample. Experiment 2 used a modified procedure in which participants were forced to plan ahead. Performance in the articulatory suppression condition was lower than that in the control condition, consistent with a role for self-directed (private and inner) speech in planning. On problems of intermediate difficulty, participants producing more private speech in the control condition showed greater susceptibility to interference from articulatory suppression than their peers, suggesting that articulatory suppression interfered with performance by blocking self-directed (private and inner) speech.     

Social attitudes modulate automatic imitation

In naturalistic interpersonal settings, mimicry or “automatic imitation” generates liking, affiliation, cooperation and other positive social attitudes. The purpose of this study was to find out whether the relationship between social attitudes and mimicry is bidirectional: Do social attitudes have a direct and specific effect on mimicry? Participants were primed with pro-social, neutral or anti-social words in a scrambled sentence task. They were then tested for mimicry using a stimulus-response compatibility procedure. In this procedure, participants were required to perform a pre-specified movement (e.g. opening their hand) on presentation of a compatible (open) or incompatible (close) hand movement. Reaction time data were collected using electromyography (EMG) and the magnitude of the mimicry/automatic imitation effect was calculated by subtracting reaction times on compatible trials from those on incompatible trials. Pro-social priming produced a larger automatic imitation effect than anti-social priming, indicating that the relationship between mimicry and social attitudes is bidirectional, and that social attitudes have a direct and specific effect on the tendency to imitate behavior without intention or conscious awareness.     

Trends in Publication of Spirituality/Religiosity Articles in Critical Care Populations

Research on spirituality and religion (S/R) is receiving more attention as healthcare staff recognize the importance of treating the whole person. This is especially pertinent in critical care, where patients and families deal with a multitude of issues. As not all research comes exclusively from theologically educated authors, this study explored publication trends of S/R articles in critical care. Findings indicated medically credentialed professionals, not chaplains and/or pastoral care staff, constituted the majority of authors in S/R articles.     

Phenomenal character, phenomenal concepts, and externalism

A celebrated problem for representationalist theories of phenomenal character is that, given externalism about content, these theories lead to externalism about phenomenal character. While externalism about content is widely accepted, externalism about phenomenal character strikes many philosophers as wildly implausible. Even if internally identical individuals could have different thoughts, it is said, if one of them has a headache, or a tingly sensation, so must the other. In this paper, I argue that recent work on phenomenal concepts reveals that, contrary to appearances, this standard conjunction of externalism about content and internalism about phenomenal character is ultimately untenable on other models of phenomenal character as well, including even “qualia realism.” This would be significant for a number of reasons. The first is patent: it would undermine a primary objection to representationalism. The fact that representationalism is incompatible with the conjunction would be no serious problem for representationalism if no other plausible model of phenomenal character is compatible with it. The second is that the many philosophers who embrace the conjunction would be forced to abandon one of the two views; externalism would be true either of both content and phenomenal character, or of neither. Likewise, those philosophers who have taken a stance on only one of the two internalism/externalism debates would have to be seen as thereby committed to a particular stance on the other. The third reason stems from the fact that qualia realism typically goes hand in hand with internalism about phenomenal character. To the extent that it does, my argument would reveal that qualia realism is itself in tension with externalism about content. This would perhaps be the most surprising result of all.