Les apports de la psychologie sociale aux situations de formation par alternance

This article aims to show how the alternating trainings have been treated by researchers using social psychology approaches. It identifies the theoretical models used, the main researches and some of their results. It comes to the idea that psychology appears as an essential discipline to understand the evolutions of the individuals in these work and training situations but it not sufficiently used. Then, some topics for future researches are designed. The alternating training appears as a very rich situation which allows to understand the individual as well as organizational transformations and the different levels of interrelations of the individual with his/her environment.     

Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Social Support Among Children and Adolescents After the 2010 Haitian Earthquake

This study explored the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms related to social support received by the children and adolescents who survived the earthquake on January 12, 2010, in Haiti. A strategy of stratified sampling was used, and 540 children and teenagers were questioned. Questionnaires based on the PTSD Checklist, the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, and the Peritraumatic Distress Inventory, among others, were used and bivariate statistical analyses were carried out. The results showed high rates of complete and partial PTSD symptoms, with higher rates among females, and indicated the need for reinforcing social support as a resilience factor for youth.     

Metacognition and low achievement in mathematics: The effect of training in the use of metacognitive skills to solve mathematical word problems

The central question underlying this study was whether metacognition training could enhance the two metacognition components—knowledge and skills—and the mathematical problem-solving capacities of normal children in grade 3. We also investigated whether metacognitive training had a differential effect according to the children's mathematics level. A total of 48 participants took part in this study, divided into an experimental and a control group, each subdivided into a lower and a normal achievers group. The training programme took an interactive approach in accordance with Schraw's (1998 Schraw, G. 1998. Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Instructional Science, 26: 113–125. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) recommendation and was carried out over five training sessions. Results indicated that children in the training group had significantly higher post-test metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive skills, and mathematical problem-solving scores. In addition, metacognitive training was particularly beneficial to the low achievers. Thus metacognitive training enabled the low achievers to make progress and solve the same number of problems on the post-test as the normal achievers solved on the pre-test.     

Family assessment: developing a formal assessment system in clinical practice

In a previous paper, we reviewed the literature on family assessment and set out some principles that can be derived from previous work. This paper describes the development of a system for family assessment which uses these principles and then gives a brief account of the practical difficulties encountered in applying such a system. (Empirical data on the system will be presented in subsequent papers as they become available.)     

Forward masking in young children: Rocketship psychophysics

A three-alternative forced choice forward masking procedure was embedded in an arcade-style rocketship video game. Human subjects were categorized into five groups; adults and 5-, 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old children. The masker was a 500-msec noise that simulated rocket engines and the 20-msec, 500-Hz sinusoidal signal was achirp from agremlin. The gremlin hid, at random, in one of the three rockets. Subjects responded and interacted with the game by touching the rocket hiding the gremlin. Results revealed that masked thresholds decreased for all groups as a function of the interstimulus interval. The reliability of the psychophysical approach was confirmed and a developmental trend lends support to the hypothesis that auditory processing improves as a function of age. Children’s auditory filters were suggested to be functionally larger than those of adults. Portions of this paper were presented at the Second Annual Convention of the American Psychological Society, June 7–10, 1990, Dallas, Texas.     

Students With Learning Disabilities and Low-Achieving Students: Peer Acceptance,Loneliness, Self-Esteem,and Depression

The present study focuses on the following questions: (a) Are students with learning disabilities (LD) and low-achieving students (LA), when controlling for age and gender, less accepted by peers, do they feel more lonely, do they have lower self-esteem, and do they feel more depressed than NLD and NLA students? (b) Does low achievement per se or does selection into special education programs or special class placement of students with LD affect these students' psychological adjustment? Two analyses were conducted to elucidate these questions. Concerning the first question, the analysis was based on a sample of 1,434 4th-, 7th-, and 9th-grade students drawn from regular school classes. It revealed that students with LD compared with NLD and NLA students were less accepted by peers, had lower self-esteem, and felt more lonely. LA students compared with NLD and NLA students were less accepted by peers, had lower self-esteem, and were more depressed. Concerning the second question, the analysis was based on a subsample of 276 LD and LA students. It revealed that, when controlling for age and gender, and holding achievement in reading, writing, arithmetic, and intelligence constant, LD students compared with LA students were less depressed but were less accepted by peers and felt lonelier. Thus, besides the effects of low academic achievement, to be labeled “a student with LD” may have negative effects primarily on peer acceptance and directly and indirectly on feelings of loneliness, particularly in primary school.

     

Working memory in children: a time-constrained functioning similar to adults

Within the time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) model, we tested a new conception of the relationships between processing and storage in which the core mechanisms of working memory (WM) are time constrained. However, our previous studies were restricted to adults. The current study aimed at demonstrating that these mechanisms are present and functional before adulthood. For this purpose, we investigated the effect on maintenance of the duration of the attentional capture induced by processing. In two experiments using computer-paced WM span tasks, 10-year-olds were asked to maintain letters while performing spatial location judgments. The duration of this processing was manipulated by varying either the discriminability between target locations or the contrast between targets and background. In both experiments, longer processing times resulted in poorer recall, as we observed previously in adults. These findings suggest that the core mechanisms of WM described by the TBRS model are already settled during childhood.     

An exploration of the moderating effect of trait emotional intelligence on memory and attention in neutral and stressful conditions

Trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) refers to individual differences in the experience, perception, regulation, and utilization of emotions. Research has shown that trait EI moderated subjective and endocrine responses to both natural and laboratory stressors. This study explores, the cognitive processes underlying this effect, under the hypothesis that trait EI moderates the impact of stress on memory and/or attention. Results supported the hypothesis, but solely for the ‘regulation’ EI‐dimension (named self‐control or SC). In neutral conditions, high SC was characterized by an attentional focus to neutral material and a facilitated memory for positive events, whereas low SC was characterized by an attentional focus to emotional material (regardless of valence) and a facilitated memory for negative events. In stressful conditions, high SC individuals engaged attention to emotional material (regardless of valence) and recalled more negative events, while low SC individuals disengaged attention from emotional material and recalled more positive events.     

Episodic memory deficits slow down the dynamics of cognitive procedural learning in normal ageing

Cognitive procedural learning is characterised by three phases, each involving distinct processes. Considering the implication of episodic memory in the first cognitive stage, the impairment of this memory system might be responsible for a slowing down of the cognitive procedural learning dynamics in the course of ageing. Performances of massed cognitive procedural learning were evaluated in older and younger participants using the Tower of Toronto task. Nonverbal intelligence and psychomotor abilities were used to analyse procedural dynamics, while episodic memory and working memory were assessed to measure their respective contributions to learning strategies. This experiment showed that older participants did not spontaneously invoke episodic memory and presented a slowdown in the cognitive procedural learning associated with a late involvement of working memory. These findings suggest that the slowdown in the cognitive procedural learning may be linked with the implementation of different learning strategies less involving episodic memory in older participants.     

Time and cognitive load in working memory

According to the time-based resource-sharing model (P. Barrouillet, S. Bernardin, & V. Camos, 2004), the cognitive load a given task involves is a function of the proportion of time during which it captures attention, thus impeding other attention-demanding processes. Accordingly, the present study demonstrates that the disruptive effect on concurrent maintenance of memory retrievals and response selections increases with their duration. Moreover, the effect on recall performance of concurrent activities does not go beyond their duration insofar as the processes are attention demanding. Finally, these effects are not modality specific, as spatial processing was found to disrupt verbal maintenance. These results suggest a sequential and time-based function of working memory in which processing and storage rely on a single and general purpose attentional resource needed to run executive processes devoted to constructing, maintaining, and modifying ephemeral representations.