The Bodily Self: The Sensori-Motor Roots of Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness

A bodily self is characterized by pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness that is “immune to error through misidentification.” To this end, the body's double involvement in consciousness is considered: it can experience objects intentionally and itself non-intentionally. Specifically, pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness, by contrast with the consciousness of the body that happens to be one's own, consists in experiencing one's body as the point of convergence of action and perception. Neither proprioception alone nor intention alone is sufficient to underlie this pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness. Rather, it is made possible thanks to a sensori-motor integration, allowing a sensitivity to the sensory consequences of one's action, through action monitoring.     

15-month-old infants detect violations in pretend scenarios

Are 15-month-old infants able to detect a violation in the consistency of an event sequence that involves pretense? In Experiment 1, infants detected a violation when an actor pretended to pour liquid into one cup and then pretended to drink from another cup. In Experiment 2, infants no longer detected a violation when the cups were replaced with objects not typically used in the context of drinking actions, either shoes or tubes. Experiment 3 showed that infants' difficulty in Experiment 2 was not due to the use of atypical objects per se, but arose from the novelty of seeing an actor appearing to drink from these objects. After receiving a single familiarization trial in which they observed the actor pretend to drink from either a shoe or a tube, infants now detected a violation when the actor pretended to pour into and to drink from different shoes or tubes. Thus, at an age (or just before the age) when infants are beginning to engage in pretend play, they are able to show comprehension of at least one aspect of pretense in a violation-of-expectation task: specifically, they are able to detect violations in the consistency of pretend action sequences.     

Can 9.5-month-old infants attribute to an agent a disposition to perform a particular action on objects?

The present research examined whether 9.5-month-old infants can attribute to an agent a disposition to perform a particular action on objects, and can then use this disposition to predict which of two new objects - one that can be used to perform the action and one that cannot - the agent is likely to reach for next. The infants first received familiarization trials in which they watched an agent slide either three (Experiments 1 and 3) or six (Experiment 2) different objects forward and backward on an apparatus floor. During test, the infants saw two new identical objects placed side by side: one stood inside a short frame that left little room for sliding, and the other stood inside a longer frame that left ample room for sliding. The infants who saw the agent slide six different objects attributed to her a disposition to slide objects: they expected her to select the "slidable" as opposed to the "unslidable" test object, and they looked reliably longer when she did not. In contrast, the infants who saw the agent slide only three different objects looked about equally when she selected either test object. These results add to recent evidence that infants in the first year of life can attribute dispositions to agents, and can use these dispositions to help predict agents' actions in new contexts.     

Can Sex‐Undifferentiated Teacher Expectations Mask an Influence of Sex Stereotypes?Alternative Forms of Sex Bias in Teacher Expectations1

This research investigated different forms of sex bias in teacher expectations relative to gymnastics performance. First, a laboratory experiment including 163 physical education teachers confirmed that stereotypes favorable to boys may influence teacher expectations in gymnastics. Next, a naturalistic study involving 15 teachers and 422 students showed that teachers expected no sex differences, even though girls performed better than boys. However, this sex bias was a result of reliance on nondiagnostic student personal characteristics favorable to boys, rather than on a stereotype per se. These results suggest that egalitarian beliefs may mask a bias in favor of a social group when group differences actually exist, and that sex‐biased teacher expectations do not inevitably involve an influence of sex stereotypes.     

Gendered Processes of Adaptation: Understanding Parent–Child Relations in Chinese Immigrant Families

Drawing on 5-year longitudinal interview data on 72 Chinese immigrant children and their parents in the U.S., this paper addresses the following research question: How does Chinese immigrant fathers’ and mothers’ adaptation after migration influence their relations with their children? Guided by grounded theory, data analyses show that parental adaptation difficulty, particularly among fathers, influences their physical and psychological presence in their children’s lives. This, combined with parents’ exceedingly high academic expectations, could result in estranged parent–child relations in families. This paper also illustrates how parental efforts to be good providers for their children and children’s hope for parents as a source of emotional support can lead to parent–child alienation in immigrant families.     

Neurobiological Markers of Illness Onset in Psychosis and Schizophrenia: The Search for a Moving Target

In this review, we describe neuropsychological and brain imaging findings in the early stages of psychosis and schizophrenia. We focus on recent clinical high-risk studies and consider whether the evidence supports these as ‘endophenotypes’ of a vulnerability to the illness or as ‘biomarkers’ of illness onset and transition. The findings suggest that there are a number of processes at psychosis onset that may represent biomarkers of incipient illness. These neurobiological indices particularly implicate the integrity of frontal and temporal cortices, which may or may not be related to the genetics of psychosis (i.e. potential ‘endophenotypes’). However, these brain regions are dynamically changing during normal maturation, meaning that any putative neurobiological markers identified at the earliest stages of illness may be relatively unstable. We suggest that, while such measures may be readily identified as potential neurobiological markers of established illness, they are inconsistent at (or around) the time of illness onset when assessed cross-sectionally. Instead, identification of more valid risk markers may require longitudinal assessment to ascertain normal or abnormal trajectories of neurodevelopment. Accordingly, we assert that the current conceptualisations of potential biomarkers and/or ‘endophenotypes’ for schizophrenia may need to be reconsidered in the context of normal and abnormal brain maturational processes at the time of onset of psychotic disorders.     

Cadre et concepts-clés de la psychologie communautaire

Community psychology has been developed since the 1960s in North America, whereas its development is much more recent in Europe. It differs from traditional models of psychology by its conception of users and communities as collaborators. This field requires from psychologists that they extend their competencies to prevention and mental health promotion. It lays on a positive conception of the individual and of health, and seeks the investment of users in the development of local mental health models and resources. This paper aims at presenting the history of community psychology, its conceptual framework and its specificities, with regards to traditional models.     

Horse (Equus caballus) whinnies: a source of social information

Many animal species that rely mainly on calls to communicate produce individual acoustic structures, but we wondered whether individuals of species better known as visual communicants, with small vocal repertoires, would also exhibit individual distinctiveness in calls. Moreover, theoretical advances concerning the evolution of social intelligence are usually based on primate species data, but relatively little is known about the social cognitive capacities of non-primate mammals. However, some non-primate species demonstrate auditory recognition of social categories and possess mental representation of their social network. Horses (Equus caballus) form stable social networks and although they display a large range of visual signals, they also use long-distance whinny calls to maintain contact. Here, we investigated the potential existence of individual acoustic signatures in whinny calls and the ability of horses to discriminate by ear individuals varying in their degree of familiarity. Our analysis of the acoustic structure of whinnies of 30 adult domestic horses (ten stallions, ten geldings, ten mares) revealed that some of the frequency and temporal parameters carried reliable information about the caller’s sex, body size and identity. However, no correlations with age were found. Playback experiments evaluated the behavioural significance of this variability. Twelve horses heard either control white noise or whinnies emitted by group members, familiar neighbours or unfamiliar horses. While control sounds did not induce any particular response, horses discriminated the social category of the callers and reacted with a sound-specific behaviour (vigilance and attraction varied with familiarity). Our results support the existence of social knowledge in horses and suggest a process of vocal coding/decoding of information.     

Two senses for ‘givenness of consciousness’

The notion of ‘givenness of consciousness’ needs further elucidation. On the one hand, I agree with Lyyra (this volume) that one sense for ‘givenness of consciousness’ is not enough to account for consciousness and self-consciousness. On the other hand, I will argue that Lyyra’s paper is problematic precisely because he fails to consider one basic sense for ‘givenness of consciousness’. Lyyra and I thus agree that there must be (at least) two senses for ‘givenness of consciousness’; we disagree, however about which modes of givenness are involved.