LES RAPPORTS ENTRE LE LANGAGE ET LA PENSÉE POINT DE VUE d'UN LINGUISTE

The author first wonders whether it was necessary to re-examine now the old problem of the relations between language and thought, as they are still too much related to traditional philosophical formulations, even among psychologists. He gives the reasons why, since Whitney, the scientific linguists, because of their epistemological prudence, voluntarily discarded this problem which they were not armed to study. Then he surveys some of the issues which, after a century of healthy anti-mentalistic views, an interdisciplinary scientific study could presently approach in a more valid and less ambitious experimental frame of work: thought without language, Whorf's hypothesis, relations between language and “splitting of the world”, lessons from experiences of translators, learning of language and pathology of language. Eventually, even though he seems to be avoiding it, he outlines the very complex problem of evaluating the still altogether unstructured draft of model with which Chomsky proposes to explain the relations between language and thought. The validity of this model is related to epistemological presuppositions and to a use of the notion of hypothetical-deductive models which it is difficult, but necessary to scrutinize at first.     

文化多样性的假想与宗教的永恒性

国内和国际的现实不断促使公众跟从一系列离奇地千篇一律的事件、话语和评论。这些事件、话语和评论无不强调“宗教的永恒性”,引证公共当局对待基督教遗产和教会的新感情,陈述从吕克·费里到克利福德·格尔茨等知识分子——总之是世俗人士——的言论。在这些人士看来,建立在信仰和超验性之上的意义境域乃是被看做拯救现代人避免丧失文化认同性、摆脱存在危机和相对主义威胁的不可绕过的护栏。     

CARACTÉRISTIQUES PSYCHOLOGIQUES DE LA PRISE DE RISQUE MONÉTAIRE DES JOUEURS ET DES NON-JOUEURS À LA ROULETTE*

This study compares different dimensions of the personality, the perception of control and risk-taking behavior of gamblers and non-gamblers exposed to American roulette. The analyses of the data revealed that no significant differences emerged among the two groups on personality or perception of control. Although gamblers started the game by stacking more money than non-gamblers, the latter rapidly bet as much as the regular gamblers. Furthermore, risk-taking behavior increased as the game progressed. The practical implications of the data are discussed in relation to the psychology of gambling.     

ACTIVITÉ MÉTACOGNITIVE DE L'ENFANT ET DIFFICULTÉ DE LA TÂCHE COGNITIVE

The influence of the type of difficulty of a cognitive task on metacognitive activity (metacognitive experiences and metacognitive strategies) was studied in six- and eight-year-old children. Children had to make decisions about the correspondence of statements and drawings presented in pairs one after the other, starting either with a statement, or with a picture. They encounter two kinds of difficulties: (1) one due to the information conveyed by drawing (non-correspondence with the statement); (2) another due to the order in which the statements and drawings are presented: when the drawing comes first the child must retain it in his memory until a statement can guide him in his decoding of it; this difficulty is unexpected given the expectations the child has due to the cognitive task proposed. The principal findings were as follows: (1) Compared to the six-year-olds, the eight-year-olds demonstrated three times more metacognitive control strategies for expressing information, more cognitive skills (reasoning), and a higher level of performance (understanding and recall). (2) The two types of difficulties do not have the same effects: (a) the difficulty due to the information conveyed by the drawing leads to an increase in the latency time; the performance (understanding) is not as good; (b) in the case of difficulty due to the statement-drawing order, twice as many verbalizations expressing metacognitive experiences and a decrease in the latency time were observed. The interpretation of the findings underscores the importance for the child of the indicators he has to orient him in mobilizing metacognitive and cognitive activities.