Emotional face recognition in autism and in cerebral visual impairments: In search for specificity

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties in the social domain, but also by hyper- and hypo-reactivity. Atypical visual behaviours and processing have often been observed. Nevertheless, several similar signs are also identified in other clinical conditions including cerebral visual impairments (CVI). In the present study, we investigated emotional face categorization in groups of children with ASD and CVI by comparing each group to typically developing individuals (TD) in two tasks. Stimuli were either non-filtered or filtered by low- and high-spatial frequencies (LSF and HSF). All participants completed the autism spectrum quotient score (AQ) and a complete neurovisual evaluation. The results show that while both clinical groups presented difficulties in the emotional face recognition tasks and atypical processing of filtered stimuli, they did not differ from one another. Additionally, autistic traits were observed in the CVI group and symmetrically, some visual disturbances were present in the ASD group as measured via the AQ score and a neurovisual evaluation, respectively. The present study suggests the relevance of comparing ASD to CVI by showing that emotional face categorization difficulties should not be solely considered as autism-specific but merit investigation for potential dysfunction of the visual processing neural network. These results are of interest in both clinical and research perspectives, indicating that systematic visual examination is warranted for individuals with ASD.     

Traffic Offences: Planned or Habitual? Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour and habit strength to explain frequency and magnitude of speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol

This study addresses the socio‐cognitive determinants of traffic offences, in particular of speeding and drinking and driving. It has two aims: (1) to test the hypothesis of a direct effect of habits on offences (i.e., independent of intentions) by employing a specific measure of habits (i.e., the SRIH) and (2) to analyse the offences by taking account of three distinct parameters: Frequency, usual magnitude (i.e., the most frequent deviation from the law) and maximal magnitude (i.e., the greatest deviation occasionally adopted) in order to represent more accurately the variability of the offending behaviours. A total of 642 drivers replied to a questionnaire. The results corroborate the idea that intention and habit are distinct and direct determinants of offences. The use of the SRIH dismisses the criticisms made with regard to the measure of past behaviour. The distinction between the three behavioural parameters proves to be relevant, as their determinants are not exactly similar. Finally, attitude and subjective norm had direct effects on the maximal magnitude and/or on the frequency of the offence. The discussion concerns the contribution of this study to the analysis of offences as well as its limitations and addresses the theoretical plausibility of the direct effects of attitude and the subjective norm.     

A dissociation between judged causality and imagined locations in simple dynamic scenes

To mentally extrapolate the trajectory of a moving object that disappears from sight, different sources of information can be exploited: memory of its last visible position, its inferred movement through time, and general understanding of the causal structure of the scene. It is often assumed that these cues are integrated into unified analog mental representations. In our experiment, participants predicted the position of an object that disappeared behind an occluder and estimated the degree to which the movement was caused by another object. They made considerable errors in predicting imagined displacements. Moreover, their predictions were misaligned with their judgments of causality. They predicted the positions of the invisible moving objects better in events that they judged less causally correct than in events that they judged more causally correct. These results suggest that physical and cognitive parameters of imagined dynamic events do not merge into unitary mental models simulating actual states of the world.     

Représentations professionnelles,satisfaction au travail et choix de carrière des personnels infirmiers : le rôle des valeurs d’autonomie

We are interested in factors which can incite nurses to abandon their profession. In this frame, job satisfaction appears as a major explanatory factor, depending on the status granted to nurses’ “own role”. Besides, several studies show the importance of values concerning job satisfaction. Then, and in reference to the concept of professional representations, we consider that nurses’ job satisfaction depends on the importance of the own role in the representation of their function, all the more that Autonomy values are essential for them. A study, realized with regis tered and student nurses, confirm this approach, so underlining the crucial role of these values for the job satisfaction of nurses.     

Stimulus complexity and prospective timing: clues for a parallel process model of time perception

Whereas many studies have considered the role of attention in prospective timing, fewer have established relations between movement complexity and prospective timing. The present study aims at assessing to what extent motion complexity interferes with prospective timing and at delineating a neuropsychophysical plausible model. We have thus designed a visual paradigm presenting stimuli in sequential pairs (reference comparison interval). Stimuli are motionless or moving according to different complexities, and stimulus complexities are intermixed within each pair. To prevent a possible attention-sharing effect, no concurrent task was required. Our study suggests that movement complexity is a key component of duration perception, and that the relative judgement of durations depends on spatio-temporal features of stimuli. In particular, it shows that movement complexity can bias subjects’ perception and performance, and that subjects detect that comparison intervals are longer than reference before their end. In the discussion, we advocate that the classical internal clock model cannot easily account for our results. Consequently, we propose a model for time perception, based on a parallel processing between comparison interval perception and the reconstruction of the reference duration.     

Phonotactic constraints help to overcome effects of schwa deletion in French

In a crossmodal priming experiment, visual targets (e.g. RENARD, 'fox') were auditorily primed by either an intact [see text] 'the fox' or reduced form [see text] 'the fox' of the word. When schwa deletion gave rise to an initial cluster that respected the phonotactic constraints of French (e.g. [lapluz] 'the lawn' in which /pl/ is a legal word beginning in French), there was a processing cost for the targets primed by the reduced form of the word compared to intact primes (e.g. [see text] 'the lawn'). However, when schwa deletion produced an initial cluster that violated the phonotactic constraints of French (e.g. [see text], where /Rn/ is not allowed as a word beginning), there was no penalty for targets primed by reduced compared to intact forms of the word. Assuming that listeners change their phonemic percept when confronted with phonotactically illegal sequences (Segui, Frauenfelder, & Hallé, 2001), phonotactic constraints may help to restore the deleted schwa in sequences like le renard [see text] in French.     

The hysterical organization

The term hysteria has been used in the history of the psychoanalytical movement to describe a large variety of psychic modalities. What is the common denominator of the hysterias? The author suggests that ambivalence in relation to penetration in its passive form (vaginal desire), in its pregenital and genital valences, constitutes the essence of hysteria. It seems that the issue of hysteria thus configured finds its best resolution in the fantasy of an incorporeal penetration, which leads to orgasm, and spares one from the anxiety of destruction to the internal space as well as from the anxiety of guilt following the hoped for climax. The author is attempting to discern, by means of two case studies, how disembodied penetration, depending on whether it is fantasized or delusional, constitutes a solution, neurotic or psychotic respectively, to the issue of hysteria: the private theatre in neurosis, as well as the inhabited and influenced mind in psychosis (delusion of control), act as psychic figurations of vagina.     

Roots and vicissitudes of psychic bisexuality

Sigmund Freud considered the difficulty in defining masculinity and femininity from a psychic point of view as a hiatus in psychoanalytic theory. I contend that masculinity pertains to the centrifugal (to that which goes out, and ultimately to that which one loses), and femininity to the centripetal (to the appetency for taking the object into one's own internal space), whether one is considering their archaic roots or their genitalized culmination. The masculine/feminine pair draws support from the body (and, through anaclisis, from the subjective space), identified with a container that is liable already in the first psychic stages of life to empty itself of its own content and to be filled by a foreign content: the content is subjective in the masculine and object‐related in the feminine. The conflicts of ambivalence related to these two movements (desire/anxieties linked to active and passive penetration) lead to the setting up of the rigid and labile poles of the personality, and they are liable to give rise to obsessional and hysterical solutions respectively. My hypotheses will be examined in the light of the two key cases of hysteria and obsessional neurosis in Freud's work: Dora (1905e) and the Rat Man (1909d).