Dissociations in aphasia: A case report

This paper is a case study of an aphasic patient who displays two interesting characteristics, namely, (1) a dissociation between his oral and written disorders (i.e., oral Wernicke vs. written Broca); (2) an agraphia-alexia syndrome in which the picturability of the entities referred to by words plays an important role. Some of the characteristics shown by this patient have been well described concerning reading but never concerning writing. This second aspect is particularly emphasized.     

How much could we boost scholastic achievement and IQ scores? A direct answer from a French adoption study

We observed 32 subjects whose biological parents were both unskilled workers. Abandoned at birth, the subjects had been placed at approximately 4 months of age into families spanning the top 13% of the socio-professional scale. The effects of this change in social class were estimated by comparisons with groups of children of unskilled workers observed in two large scale studies. An internal control group was also available for 20 of the 32 subjects: the biological half-siblings who had been reared in their ‘natural’ environment. The effects observed are an increase of 14 IQ points in the mean IQ score estimated with 2 tests and a reduction by a factor of 4 in the probability of repeating a grade. These are significant despite the small number of subjects; we have shown that the bulk of these effects cannot be attributed to methodological biases. Our observations thus provide a direct quantitative answer to the question posed by Jensen in 1969.     

On realizable biorders and the biorder dimension of a relation

The paper discusses the mathematical foundations of a technique of multidimensional scaling, generalizing Guttman scaling, in which the structure of the embedding space relies only on ordinal concepts. An empirical relation is represented as an intersection of a minimal number (called bidimension) of Guttman relations. Fairly complete results are given for the cases of bidimensions 1 and 2. In the general case, the main results are based on the equivalence between the bidimension and the dimension of a certain partial order. A characterization of the bidimension as the chromatic number of some hypergraph is also provided.     

Une base de données en sémantique du verbe : Semasit

In this article, we present Semasit, a semantic database for French verbs developed for the purposes of experimental research in psycholinguistics and neuropsychology. This database features the distribution of the agents and patients of 96 verbs of interpersonal relations, and 60 verbs of change of state, based on their probability of occurence for 100 participants. It also provides the free-association norms of these 156 verbs. The degree of imagery is also presented for some of them. For 24 verbs of interpersonal relations, this semantic database is completed by the distribution of the patients, when an agent and a verb are presented together. It also provides the free association norms of the patients in this case. This database in freely accessible and can be downloaded from the Internet: http://www.mshs.univ-poitiers.fr/lmdc/semasit/frame-index.htm.     

Les pratiques d’evaluation utilisees dans les structures de conseil en recrutement : quelques determinants

Referring to the work of Bruchon-Schweitzer & Ferrieux (1991) and Balicco (1999), the present study describes the recruitment practices of different types of organizations (N=327, 134 consulting companies and 193 temporary placement firms). We hypothesised that job position and recruiter characteristics (sex, age, level and type of education, status, and recruitment experience) would influence the use of selection techniques. Results revealed that choice of selection techniques is not based on a scientific evaluation of applicants. Job position seems to strongly determine use of personality assessment techniques. Further, recruiter characteristics only seem to determine choice of less valid techniques. In the discussion, a theoretical model of choices made by recruiters and some courses of action are proposed.     

Pour une approche contextuelle et clinique de la demande de recrutement : la transformation d’une demande initiale dans une entreprise familiale

Studies of psychology in the work place usually analyse job offers from an explicit and functional point of view, forgetting the more implicit and strategic dimensions associated with them. This activity of recruitment takes into account the understanding of the specific context of the job offer and of the structure of the organisation which is looking to recruit. The clinical case study described here takes into consideration these contextual elements of very small company and proposes recruitment methods which include a third party, emphasising the particular role of psychologists or consultancies as recruitment advisers.