Qualité de vie des enfants asthmatiques : impact du sentiment d’efficacité personnelle, du ressenti des enfants, et de la gestion de l’asthme par les parents

The objective of this research was to investigate the influence of children's self-efficacy, attitudes and their parent's asthma management on quality of life among children suffering from asthma. One hundred and forty-six children (8-12 years old) with moderate to severe asthma filled in a quality of life questionnaire, and a self-efficacy and attitudes scales; 92 parents completed the childhood asthma self-management scale. Results show that the children's negative feelings about asthma and the parents’ difficulties to manage asthma are linked to a worse quality of life; the children's self-efficacy influences both positively and negatively children's quality of life. The development of parents’ asthma management program should enhance their children's quality of life.     

Un jury sous influence : l’impact des affects, du type d’expertise et des circonstances aggravantes sur l’activité décisionnelle des jurés

We investigated the effects of three variables on jurors' verdict and sentence concerning a motorist responsible for the accidental death a man. Specifically, we assessed the effects of some aggravating circumstances, and those of two extra legal variables, namely, the nature of the feelings presumably expressed by the accident perpetrator regarding the victim, and the content of a medical and psychological expertise about him. The perpetrator was given a harsher sentence, assigned a negative identity, and was the target of little identification when he was submitted to a biological expertise, said to have displayed some indifference regarding the victim, and when he was charged with aggravating circumstances. Conversely, when the accused showed some sadness, he received a lenient sentence, especially in the absence of aggravating circumstances.     

Effets de l’âge et de la capacité de mémoire de travail sur l’exécution d’instructions de complexité variable chez des adultes jeunes et âgés

Technical devices are part of elderly people's daily life. Meanwhile, research has not yet systematically explored how old people understand procedural instructions accompanying these devices. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate how age and memory span affect how people follow procedural instructions. To do so, the Reading Span Test of Daneman & Carpenter (1980) and an adaptation of the Kaplan & White's (1980) following directions game were administrated to young and older adults. The Reading Span Test was administrated in order to determine the participants’ memory span size. Then, participants had to follow procedural instructions with a growing complexity displayed on a computer screen. Results show that participants’ age and instructions complexity affect how the instructions are performed. Old adults encounter more difficulty performing the task than young adults. Furthermore, whatever the age, as the complexity of instructions increases, low-span participants have more difficulty performing instructions than high-span participants do.     

Facteur d’impact et mondialisation culturelle

In the present article, we recall the principle of articles consummation as defined by the ISI creator (Institute for Scientific Information). That principle justifies the impact factor (IF) used as a measure of a journal scientific value, of a researcher or of a researcher group… We expose some assumptions that support the IF validity. Further we demonstrate that, on the one hand, these assumptions are not very well established and, on the other hand, that principle and the IF success bias the scientific activity. We consider next two shapes that this bias could take: at best a phenomenon of fashions, at worst, an ideological war having as purpose the American way of thinking domination.     

Le renversement de préférence… renversé !

Preference reversal (PR) occurs when pairs of lottery gambles are evaluated under two different conditions: to choose the gamble preferred to play and assign minimum selling price to each gamble. The preference order is then reversed from one condition to another: while it receives the lowest selling price, the gamble less risked is preferred in condition of play. Many times replicated, this result is considered as a cognitive bias. Recent research suggests that it could be related only to the procedure used to present the gambles (i.e., the evaluation mode): either by pair (joint evaluation or JE) in condition of play, or one by one (separate evaluation or SE) in the pricing task. Then, by reversing the evaluation mode in each condition, PR should be reversed, as it is shown in this study: although the phenomenon still occurs when subjects evaluate gambles in the classical paradigm, we observe an inversion of PR when they have, on the one hand, to play in SE, and on the other hand, to sell in JE. Furthermore, an analysis not often used in this literature provides new elements, which can attest to the cognitive mechanisms underlying the phenomenon: by recording the online information (self-paced display time paradigm) we show the effect of an anchoring and adjustment process when riskiest gambles are preferred.     

Recherche et classification d’indicateurs d’acculturation à partir du contexte francophone

Our research aims at finding original indicators of the acculturation process for French-speaking people, in order to contribute to deepen and to make operational this concept in the French-speaking context. To accomplish this, texts written in French were selected from the Internet and were analyzed using Alceste. A downward, hierarchical analysis of data allowed us to establish three classes of indicators which predicted outcomes of health, work, and acculturation in general. This multifaceted structure brought together the concerns of researchers with respect to immigrants’ strategies for identity formation and how well they adapted to everyday life, notably in France. We can consider, based on psycholexical theory, that these indicators reflect representations and mental processes relating to the acculturation process in the French-speaking world.     

Connaissance du nom et du son des lettres, habiletés métaphonémiques et capacités de décodage en grande section de maternelle

This study examined the specific implication of letter-name knowledge in reading acquisition on 5-year-old kindergarten children. Several studies underlined the importance of both phonological and orthographic skills (letters and grapho-phonological associations’ knowledge developed during reading acquisition). So, we focused on the link between those different early abilities and on their links with reading acquisition during school year. Thus, at the beginning and at the end of the year, we proposed to 40 children metaphonemic tasks (phoneme identification in initial and final position in the words), letter-sound and letter-name knowledge tasks (naming and identification) and a pseudo-words decoding task. In addition, to access letter-name knowledge, two types of measurements were proposed: an accuracy measure and a speed one. Mean number of correct responses and reaction times were collected by children and analysed too. Results show that letter-name knowledge could play a part in metaphonemic abilities development and in letter-sound associations’ discovery and acquisition, at the beginning of the year. Thanks to those skills improvement, letter-name knowledge could have an indirect impact on later children's decoding skills. Furthermore, the direct link, already observed at the beginning of the year, between letter-name knowledge and decoding skills still exists in April. At last, analyses on letter-name knowledge access time show that the more children name an important number of letters, the more they do it quickly. These results could mean that a certain level of letter-name knowledge have to be reach before children could use this knowledge automatically. All together, results confirm the importance of good letter-name knowledge in the first stages of reading acquisition. We also suggest taking into account some clues of letter-name knowledge's automatic use to better understand reading acquisition processes.     

Étude des déterminants personnels du comportement scolaire de l'élève : test d'un modèle structural

This study aims to grasp and understand the role of some personal features and some dynamical mechanisms of the personality in the determination of the pupil's academic behaviour. A general model is developed and tested, on a sample of 336 elementary school pupils, with respect to three principles: causal order, association and non-artificiality. The data analysis is then refined by developing a structural model. The results prove that the dynamical mechanisms of the personality relating to the affective entry characteristics should be considered as dependent and independent variables. They allow to identify the principal personal determinants of pupil rowdyism, reaction toward class, making friends and academic achievement.     

Le statut de la critique en psychologie du travail : une clinique de l’activité

The first purpose of the article is to take advantage of observations made on the status of criticism in sociology. This involves a diagnosis on the state of work psychology. The aim is to alter the trend of criticism and support a clinical approach to activity derived from Vygotski's research. The idea of critical psychology as a self-sufficient line of study is invalidated. An example is developed in order to describe the operating method. The last part of the article is devoted to a brief discussion of Beauvois's recent theories.     

Capacité de mémoire de travail et traitement du pronom chez l’enfant

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and reading comprehension in children by testing the processing of pronouns. Two groups of nine- to ten-year-old children classified as high span and low span were administered a pronoun processing task. In this task, the computation of the antecedent referent for pronouns was varied by manipulating the distance between the pronoun and its antecedent and the availability of a gender cue. The results showed that compared to high-span children, low-span children experienced more difficulties in computing a pronoun's referent. High-span children spent longer reading sentences containing anaphoric pronouns when pronouns could not be resolved on the basis of the gender alone, suggesting that the pronouns were resolved as they were read. Low-span children tended to delay resolution until it was required by the task. In the question-answering times, low-span children were more adversely affected by distance than high-span children. Altogether these findings support the view that working memory capacity constrains resolution of anaphoric pronouns in children.     

L'accord grammatical de genre dans la dysphasie de développement

Various studies report that children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have important difficulties in using grammatical morphemes expressing gender, number or tense but none of these studies let us determine whether agreement perception is impaired. To answer this question, 18 children with SLI and 18 control children without language impairment participated in two tasks testing production and perception of French gender agreement between determiner and noun. The results showed that (i) only children with SLI produced gender errors or determiner omissions whereas (ii) both groups were sensitive to agreement violations: they were slower and made more errors to categorize disagreeing determiner phrases (*the_[masc] banana_[fem]).     

Conséquences et corrélats associés au soutien de l’autonomie dans divers domaines de vie

Self-determination theory (0160 and 0170) suggests that autonomy-supportive environments, where one's perspective is considered, feelings are recognized, meaningful informations are given, and opportunities for choice are provided, promote optimal functioning. Many studies show that autonomy support leads to positive affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences. However, this body of research is little known because studies are scattered throughout various research fields and no review of the overall positive impact of autonomy support in various life domains is available. This literature review presents studies on this interpersonal style in five life domains.     

L'élaboration du contenu du texte : de la mémoire à long terme à l'environnement de la tâche

This paper aims at analysing different theories about text content elaboration. In the literature, the conceptual processing is considered through its relationships with long-term memory and the retrieving process during planning. It has been shown that knowledge availability and organisation influenced the writing progress. The task environment, which contains both the text that is currently written and documentary sources, equally plays an important role during text content elaboration. In this framework, the question concerning the double influence of knowledge from long-term memory and information from environment on the dynamics of writing processing is raised. The working memory, the activation theories and the analysis of the writer's eye movements are studied to answer this crucial question.     

Introduction : hauts potentiels et talents : la position actuelle du problème

In this introduction to the special issue on giftedness of the review Psychologie Française, the evolution of ideas on intelligence is first discussed. The broadening of the concept of intelligence and the distinction between different kinds of intelligence have indeed some consequences for the definition and for the assessment of giftedness. Some general remarks are then made on the current state of the art in the research on giftedness, in France and in the world, before introducing the various contributions gathered in this special issue.     

Contribution de la neuropsychologie développementale à l'étude des sujets à haut potentiel : une revue de questions

Developmental neuropsychology studies cognitive development in relation with brain maturation and cerebral plasticity. Some authors have reported physiological correlates of intellectual precocity with the purpose of demonstrating neural basis of intelligence. A part of the literature also reports various cognitive profile and specific talents in information processing in the clinical population of gifted children. Thus, the study of exceptional performances may contribute to our knowledge of functional brain organization taking into consideration individual differences.     

La représentation du but dans le contrôle exécutif chez l’enfant

Implementation of executive control over thought and action can only be guided by the goals that one desires to reach. Over the last decade, research has pointed out the central role of goal representation in executive control both during childhood and adulthood. The present paper reviews these findings, emphasizing the developmental dynamics observed during childhood. More precisely, it addresses the role of active goal maintenance in working memory, as it has been stressed by developmental and neurocognitive theoretical models. Beyond goal maintenance, the question as to how goal representations are formed in working memory has attracted research efforts lately. With age, children successfully process increasingly subtle environmental cues to infer the current task goal and when task goals need to be updated, as evidenced by the effect of cue transparency on switching and inhibition performance. In addition, the paper addresses how goal representation sheds light on the interplay between executive skills and conceptual knowledge, through the presentation of research in such domains as analogical reasoning, categorical flexibility, and class inclusion quantification. Taken together, these lines of research show that executive control development does not rely exclusively on a growing ability to implement appropriate actions, but it also depends largely on increasingly efficient identification of what such actions should be.