The Ecological Validity of Delay Aversion and Response Inhibition as Measures of Impulsivity in AD/HD: A Supplement to the NIMH Multimodal Treatment Study of AD/HD

Impulsivity is a primary symptom of the combined type of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). The Stop Signal Paradigm is premised upon a primary deficit in inhibitory control in AD/HD, whereas the Delay Aversion Hypothesis, by contrast, conceptualizes impulsivity in AD/HD, not as an inability to inhibit a response, but rather as a choice to avoid delay. This study compared the ecological validity of the Stop Signal Task (SST) and Choice-Delay Task (C-DT) measure of delay aversion, with respect to their relative utility in discriminating AD/HD children from normal control participants, and their correlations with classroom observations and with ratings of impulsivity and other core AD/HD symptoms on the Conners and SNAP-IV checklists. The tasks exhibited modest discriminant validity when used individually and excellent discriminant validity when used in combination. The C-DT correlated with teacher ratings of impulsivity, hyperactivity, and conduct problems, and with observations of gross motor activity, physical aggression, and an AD/HD composite score. The SST correlated with the observations only. These results suggest that delay aversion is associated with a broad range of AD/HD characteristics whereas inhibitory failure seems to tap a more discrete dimension of executive control     

The Relevance of Tillich for the Theology and Science Dialogue

This paper explores the relevance of the theology of Paul Tillich for the contemporary dialogue with the natural sciences. The focus is on his Systematic Theology , volume I. First I discuss the general relevance of Tillich's methodology (namely, the method of correlation) for that dialogue, stressing that a genuine dialogue requires cognitive input from both sides and that both sides find "value added" according to their own criteria (or what I call the method of "mutual creative interaction"). Then I move specifically to a Tillichian theological analysis of twentieth-century theoretical science and its empirical discoveries, including Big Bang, inflationary, and quantum cosmologies, quantum physics, thermodynamics, chaos and complexity, and molecular and evolutionary biology, suggesting how they relate to such Tillichian themes as finitude and the categories of being and knowing (time, space, causality, and substance) and to Tillich's understanding of such symbols as God, freedom and destiny, creation, and estrangement. In doing so, my intention is to provide a point of departure for further extended analyses of Tillich's theology in relation to contemporary natural science.