La révision du texte : une activité de contrôle et de réflexion

Recent proposals in the field of text revision reveal significant changes in perspective concerning cognitive processes involved in writing. Whereas revision has been considered for a long time as being aimed at enhancing writing, this activity is now seen as a control of the different writing processes. Thus, planning is now added to this control process. Our review shows how results of novel studies strengthen this conception and in which way further researches should be pursued. In particular, we focus on three issues: training of control performed by expert writers, the cognitive cost of the required cognitive treatments and the conditions which permit to increase this control among writers during learning.     

Neurones miroir, résonance et cognition sociale

Mirror neurons were discovered in the 1990's by cognitive neuroscientists from Parma. How central are mirror neurons in primates, social cognition. Do mirror neurons enable an observer to match the agent's observed movements onto her own motor repertoire? Does this matching enable the observer to represent the agent's intention, as argued by Rizzolatti et al? A positive answer to these questions can't be provided unless one assumme that mirror neurons compute the goal of an action by means of a “forward model” of the perceived action. However, the experimental evidence rather suggests that mirror neurons compute the motor means for achieving the desired goal, in accordance with an “inverse model” of the perceived action.     

La localisation cérébrale des facultés mentales

Although the word faculty has been criticized by « scientific » psychologists, Fodor used it more recently in his famous book on modularity of mind (1983). During second half of the xixth, the cerebral localization of faculties or mental functions by phrenologists and physiologists interested most researchers which have continued in the same way but with others technologies like functional cerebral imagery. We underlined in the paper the difficulties associated with the discovery of the precise localization of the mental functions and the necessity of reinforcing the dialogue between neurosciences, psychology and philosophy.     

La répression émotionnelle et son rôle en psychopathologie

In the context of studies on mechanisms of emotional treatment and regulation in affective blunting, this paper focalizes on those whose objective is to disminish awareness of subjective emotional experience. The cognitive mechanism of repression is first presented, defined as a coping strategy which, used in a habitual way, is conceptualised as a personality dimension. Its role on the whole panel of emotional components and the researches on its underlying cognitive mechanisms, in particular those which may explain the observed memory deficits for negative emotional events, are developed. The paper also presents models of maturation of emotional awareness, differentiating several hypothetic ways of emotional treatment which determine specific emotional subjective experiences. In regard of studies which have explored these modes of emotional treatment in alexithymia, hypotheses on their role in the blunting of affect process and on the quality of subjective experience are proposed.     

Two‐year‐old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions

Children are sensitive to both social and non‐social aspects of the learning environment. Among social cues, pedagogical communication has been shown to not only play a role in children's learning, but also in their own active transmission of knowledge. Vredenburgh, Kushnir and Casasola, Developmental Science, 2015, 18, 645 showed that 2‐year‐olds are more likely to demonstrate an action to a naive adult after learning it in a pedagogical than in a non‐pedagogical context. This finding was interpreted as evidence that pedagogically transmitted information has a special status as culturally relevant. Here we test the limits of this claim by setting it in contrast with an explanation in which the relevance of information is the outcome of multiple interacting social (e.g., pedagogical demonstration) and non‐social properties (e.g., action complexity). To test these competing hypotheses, we varied both pedagogical cues and action complexity in an information transmission paradigm with 2‐year‐old children. In Experiment 1, children preferentially transmitted simple non‐pedagogically demonstrated actions over pedagogically demonstrated more complex actions. In Experiment 2, when both actions were matched for complexity, we found no evidence of preferential transmission of pedagogically demonstrated actions. We discuss possible reasons for the discrepancy between our results and previous literature showing an effect of pedagogical cues on cultural transmission, and conclude that our results are compatible with the view that pedagogical and other cues interact, but incompatible with the theory of a privileged role for pedagogical cues.     

Mesure du bien-être psychologique dans un contexte de réadaptation fonctionnelle

The purpose of this study is to develop a valid, sensitive and reliable tool to measure psychological well-being in rehabilitation context. Psychologists working in different European countries, set out ideas on the basis of their experience and collected data from the people involved; then the researchers in social psychology analysed this data and guided the practitioners approach by developing a tool based on scientific indicators. Factor analyses allowed to reorganize the initial questionnaire and to define 4 factors important to appreciate psychological well-being in this context: cognitive and social abilities, communication skills about their own difficulties, knowledge of their health, and emotional coping. The final tool appears to be sensitive to evolution during the rehabilitation process on two factors: communication skills and emotional coping.     

Logique interlocutoire de la résolution en dyade d'un problème d'arithmétique

For about thirty years now, an increasingly large number of robust and incontestable experimental findings have been arguing for the idea that, under certain conditions, interaction promotes the acquisition of cognitive skills, a phenomenon that cannot be clarified by multiplying the number of experiments. To progress, we must have tools designed for studying interaction as it actually affects the interlocutors. This means starting from the "surface" level of interactive dynamics and, step-by-step, constructing the stages of the interaction. This is the aim of interlocutory logic. We use it here to interpret the interlocutory behavior of a child conversing with another child as they solve an arithmetic problem, and to show that the dyadic cosolving process facilitates the acquisition of proportionality. The intersubjective processes that modify cognitions across situations are identified.     

Embodied communication: Speakers’ gestures affect listeners’ actions

We explored how speakers and listeners use hand gestures as a source of perceptual-motor information during naturalistic communication. After solving the Tower of Hanoi task either with real objects or on a computer, speakers explained the task to listeners. Speakers’ hand gestures, but not their speech, reflected properties of the particular objects and the actions that they had previously used to solve the task. Speakers who solved the problem with real objects used more grasping handshapes and produced more curved trajectories during the explanation. Listeners who observed explanations from speakers who had previously solved the problem with real objects subsequently treated computer objects more like real objects; their mouse trajectories revealed that they lifted the objects in conjunction with moving them sideways, and this behavior was related to the particular gestures that were observed. These findings demonstrate that hand gestures are a reliable source of perceptual-motor information during human communication.     

Le vieillissement cognitif et l’hypothèse de l’exercice mental révisée

Although intuitively plausible, the evidence relevant to the mental exercise hypothesis is currently mixed. One of the main controversial issues concerning the investigation of this hypothesis has to do with how cognitive stimulation is assessed. The mental exercise hypothesis was here tested with a subjective and self-reported measure of cognitive stimulation. Overall, results have supported that a greater engagement in cognitively stimulating activities was associated with higher levels of cognitive functioning. However, the rate of cognitive decline with advancing age was not reduced for people who were more mentally active. Of great interest, the subjective measure of cognitive engagement have supported that cognitive demands assessed by participants on activities varied as a function of participants’ cognitive resources: lower cognitive resources were associated with lower perceived cognitive demands.     

Rationales in children’s causal learning from others’ actions

Shown commensurate actions and information by an adult, preschoolers’ causal learning was influenced by the pedagogical context in which these actions occurred. Four-year-olds who were provided with a reason for an experimenter’s action relevant to learning causal structure showed more accurate causal learning than children exposed to the same action and data accompanied by an inappropriate rationale or accompanied by no explanatory information. These results suggest that children’s accurate causal learning is influenced by contextual factors that specify the instructional value of others’ actions.     

Quelques réflexions sur l'avenir en France des traitements psychologiques appuyés empiriquement

The effectiveness of treatments for psychological problems is an important preoccupation in the field of clinical psychology, both nationally and internationally. This article discusses the emergence of empirically supported psychological therapies, and identifies some current issues in France. ESPT have received limited attention in France to date, in contrast with other developed countries. Furthermore, there appear to be fundamental misunderstandings and negative attitudes concerning the idea that psychological interventions can be evaluated in terms of their benefits and effects. In future, more effort needs to be made to ensure that qualified and trainee clinical psychologists are aware of the importance of evaluating psychological interventions. This has implications for educational programmes, research activity and clinical practice.     

Les comportements de protection face au risque naturel : de la résistance à l’engagement

An adequate risk management requires taking into account all the categories of stakeholders, including the exposed populations. Nowadays, one difficulty is to involve these populations and consequently to understand their reactions face to the eventuality of a disaster's occurrence. Several issues must be addressed: how is the representation of risk built up ? How do people develop adaptive strategies towards risk ? And above all, how is it possible to ensure an increase in behaviours suited for prevention and protection ? After drawing up a report on the research in this area, we will discuss the limitations of a persuasive communication, in order to better understand the interest of a binding communication for the management of natural hazards.     

Produire et réviser la morphologie flexionnelle du nombre : de l'accès à une expertise

To understand how children and adults produce written text, you must first be able to describe how they acquire some basic mechanisms. This is the reason to study the acquisition and use of simple orthographic principles. Following this idea, the research of Largy, Fayol et al. concerns nominal and verbal agreement in French. This article proposes a synthesis of the recent development in this domain. Through the study of two competences to be acquired by the writer — (1) to produce the flexional morphology of number in written text and (2) to revise and judge the correctness of this production — this article presents and discusses in which way the learner access to a writing expertise, always relative.     

Enfants juifs cachés (1940-1944) : une littérature récente

The psychological literature about child survivors of the Holocaust, including “hidden children”, is recent and essentially American and Israeli. Trauma of child survivors of the Holocaust has been recognized in the 1980s. First articles have been published in the United States and Israel. All the clinicians identify traumatic symptomatology. The diagnosis of PTSD is questioned. Literature about “hidden children” has been written after 1991. After recognition of their suffering, articles and books emerged, especially American and Israeli studies. In Europe, only a few articles come out, they are mostly from Netherlands. This article presents a review of the psychological literature, predominantly American and Israeli concerning child survivors of the Holocaust and “hidden children” according to qualitative and quantitative methodology. Recently, a few researches start coming out and are published in French journals.