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.     

Is Scripture the origin of the Halakhah?

Scripture, in particular the Pentateuch, forms the natural starting point for any inquiry into origins in Judaism. The question answered here derives from a simple fact: the Pentateuch is privileged within the Rabbinic system, which links as much of the Halakhah to the Pentateuchal law codes as it possibly can. So it is quite natural to treat Scripture as the base-line and the Halakhic category-formations as the variable, in seeking the origin of the system. But what happens when we treat the system as the base-line and Scripture as the variable? Then we see that the Halakhic system viewed as a coherent statement does not originate in Scripture. Scripture is not the origin of the Halakhah. Why not? Because of this paradox: Scripture is necessary for the Halakhic system. But Scripture is insufficient for the Halakhic system. The Halakhic system is necessary for Scripture. The Halakhic system is sufficient without Scripture. It requires only Scripture's facts ‐ and these on their own form no system.     

You Can Get Here From There

We introduce 3 studies of the empirical correlates of the MMPI–2 Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales: a study by Arbisi, Sellbom, and Ben-Porath (2008/this issue) that expands the range of correlates of the RC scale in mental health settings; an investigation by Sellbom, Ben-Porath, Baum, Erez, and Gregory (2008/this issue) of the empirical correlates of the scales in a forensic setting; and a study by Forbey and Ben-Porath (2008/this issue) examining convergent and discriminant validities of the RC scale in a nonclinical setting. To serve as a general introduction to the 3 new empirical studies presented in this special section, we begin with a review of the existing literature on the RC scales and briefly describe these studies.     

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.     

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.     

Your mistakes are mine: Self-other overlap predicts neural response to observed errors

This study examined whether the degree to which one perceives overlap between the self and another person predicts the magnitude of the neural response of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) following the observation of that person’s errors. Specifically, we measured the magnitude of the observational feedback-related negativity (oFRN), an event-related potential associated with observing someone else make an error, while participants watched strangers or friends complete a Stroop task. Results show stronger activation of the ACC, as indexed by the oFRN, for those who observed friends compared to those who observed strangers. This effect was mediated by the degree to which participants included the other in their conception of the self. This study contributes a unique examination of real-life close pairs to a growing body of research showing that social factors can greatly impact neural processing.