Origine de l’effet longueur de mots en mémoire à court terme verbale chez l’enfant

The current study investigated the determinants of the word length effect in five-, seven-, and nine-year-old children building on Henry (Q J Exp Psychol 43A (1991a) 35-52) previous work. Henry postulated that the word length effect observed in children was caused by verbal output and not rehearsal. Children were given an immediate serial recall task where full verbal recall is required and an immediate probed recall task where only one of the items has to be recall (the item indicated by the experimenter). In the probed recall task, the spatial probe previously used by Henry and criticized by Gathercole and Hitch (Gathercole, S.E., Hitch, G.J., 1993. Developmental Changes in Short-Term Memory: a Revised Working Memory Perspective. In: Collins A. F., Gathercole S. E., Conway M. A., Morris P. E. (Eds.), Theories of Memory. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hove, pp. 189-209) was changed for a pure verbal probe. Our results indicated that 5-, 7-, and 9-year-old children were sensitive to words length when full verbal recall was required. On the contrary, word length effects were not found in five-, seven-, and nine-year-old children when recall was restricted to just one item. These results lend further support to Henry's hypothesis suggesting that the word length effect operates at recall time, through output delay.     

The Child Food Rejection Scale: Development and validation of a new scale to assess food neophobia and pickiness among 2- to 7-year-old French children

IntroductionThe two strongest obstacles to extend children's consumption of fruit and vegetables are food neophobia and pickiness, assumed to be the main kinds of food rejection in children. Accordingly, psychometric tools that provide a clear assessment of these kinds of food rejections are greatly needed.ObjectiveTo design and validate a new scale for the assessment of food neophobia and pickiness, thus filling a major gap in the psychometric assessment of food rejection by French children.MethodWe concentrated on French children aged 2–7 years, as no such scale exists for this young population, and on the two known dimensions of food rejection, namely food neophobia and pickiness, as the nature of the relationship between them is still unclear. The scale was tested on two samples (N₁ = 168; N₂ = 256) of caregivers who responded for their children. Additionally, a food choice task was administered to 17 children to check the scale's predictive validity.ResultsThe resulting scale, called the Child Food Rejection Scale (CFRS), included six items relating to food neophobia and five items relating to pickiness. A factor analysis confirmed the two-dimensional structure of the scale. Internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity were all satisfactory. Moreover, results from the food choice task showed that scores on the CFRS accurately predicted children's attitudes toward new and familiar foods.ConclusionTaken together, these findings suggest that the CFRS, a short and easy-to-administer scale, represents a valuable tool for studying food rejection tendencies in French children.     

Le développement des capacités de jugement des durées chez l'enfant

For several decades, since the work of Piaget, it has been believed that correct judgements of durations require sophisticated reasoning abilities that emerge at about 8 years of age. However, some researchers have demonstrated accurate temporal knowledge in young children and have explained their poor judgements on classical piagetian tasks not by their inability to correctly judge time, but by age-related attentional difficulties. Recently, researchers have thus reassessed the temporal behaviour in children with the experimental paradigms used in animals and humans adults in the framework of the temporal information processing models that assume the existence of an internal clock. Findings suggest that this type of clock is functional at an early age. Other findings allow us to better understand the role of the development of attention, memory and metacognitive processes in the development of the abilities to judge time. The aim of this article is to synthesize these recent findings.     

Déjà vu现象理论及其相关实验研究述评

Déjà vu指任何对目前体验的一种不适宜的熟悉感,并伴随着对过去体验的不确定感。对déjà vu的进一步深入研究将澄清对记忆的认识。首先,文章阐述了déjà vu现象产生的理论解释;其次,将相关的实验研究概括为：阈下知觉实验研究和阈上知觉实验研究。最后,讨论了目前déjà vu研究中所存在的一些问题。     

Les tâches de développement : un concept à redécouvrir

Over 60 years ago, developmental and educational psychologist Robert J. Havighurst (1948, 1953, 1972) proposed the concept of “developmental-task” in order to better understand and help improve if necessary the psychosocial development of the individual. This concept is still widely used in German and Anglo-American psychology and deserves, according to us, to be better known in France. Thus, the aim of the paper is to present different aspects of this concept and to demonstrate its interest for developmental psychology.     

Les capacités de transfert en situation d'apprentissage implicite chez des préadolescents présentant un retard mental

This study investigates the transfer issue in implicit learning in pre-adolescents with mental retardation (MR), matched with normally developing children. A simple task is used to assess the transfer of a graphic behavior learned implicitly. The results show that the behavioral modifications induced by implicit learning can be transferred to a new graphic figure, in similar proportions in same mental age (MA) participants with and without MR. This transfer effect is independent on the degree of MR. The results are discussed with respect to the robustness of implicit learning (Reber, 1989), and to the “transfer decrement” phenomena. We also discuss how this type of learning can be used for the benefit of MR persons.     

Les gestes en autoconfrontation croisée : enjeux et pratiques

This article aims to show how the relationship between gestures and speech can help understand mechanisms of activity's development. In situation of self-confrontation work analysis between two workers, we study more precisely the repetition of a sweep gesture made by one of the two professionals and repeated by the other one. We argue that this type of repetition highlights development of activities mechanisms. From two extracts from a cross self-confrontation, we analyze the coordination between speech and gestures. We finally show that mismatches between gestures and speech make possible to understand development of activity of these professionals in this particular context. As a conclusion, the hypothesis that this development may be one of the origins of the transformation of action in ordinary work situations is advanced.     

Dynamique des processus de développement de carrière en contexte contre-stéréotypique : modélisation de la réussite des femmes militaires aux formations professionnelles

Careers in the French Navy are determined by successive certifications allowed military to have more and more managerial responsibilities. Women are unequally represented in the hierarchy. Military identity is deeply associated with male characteristics (Sorin, 2003). Women encounter difficulties to be perceived as military in their own right (Héritier, 2011), but also to articulate their identity as women with their professional identity, de facto in opposition (Toulgoat, 2002). On the one hand women's family life is seen as incompatible with service life (Caraire & Léger, 2000), on the other hand, within the crews of warships, their skills are underestimated (Matthews, Ender, Laurence, & Rohall, 2009). The objective of this study is to model the effects of professional identifications and self-assessment of competences on the success of military women in professional certifications. We interviewed 154 students in training to become “experienced operators” (including 73 women) with an average of 3.32 years of duty (SD = 2.11) and 61 students in training to become “team leader” (including 20 women) with an average of 9.28 years of duty (SD = 3.30). The questionnaire measures self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977), performance expectations compared to their colleagues (Rosenthal, Crisp, & Suen, 2007), identification to the professional group (Laplante & Tougas, 2011) and identification to the organization (Tougas, Rinfret, Beaton, & de la Sablonniere, 2005). The final score at the end of the training is considered as an indicator of success. While women are as successful as men in the certification “operator”, they are less successful in the certification “team leader”. The structural equation model (path analysis) (χ²(15, n = 215) = 21.32, p = .13; CFI = .982, GFI = .976, RMSEA = .044) emphasizes the centrality of professional identifications to succeed in training. Women are less identified with sailor than men and feel less able to succeed, they develop lower performance expectations and they underestimate their performance compared to their colleagues, which has a negative effect on their success in training. In parallel, changes in family life are associated with reduced professional identifications, but this effect is independent of the sex of the individuals. Women are therefore exposed to two independent sources of influence limiting their career development: gender, which leads to less professional identifications and to compare unfavorably with their colleagues, and family status. These results highlight the importance of the dynamic of self-realization processes throughout the career.     

Intuitive physics and cognitive algebra: A review

IntroductionIntuitive physics explores how people without a formal instruction in physics intuitively understand physical phenomena. After a general overview of the topics of current research in intuitive physics and a discussion of current debates, this paper provides an introduction to Information Integration Theory (IIT).ObjectiveBy means of examples, it is shown how IIT can be used to directly compare the algebraic structure of physical laws and the algebraic structure of cognitive representations of these laws.MethodThe review considers about 40 years of research on the application of IIT in the field of intuitive physics. Occasionally, reference is also made to intuitive physics studies outside this theoretical framework.ResultsThe reviewed studies highlight four main factors that affect the degree of consistency between physical laws and cognitive algebraic laws: the participants’ age, their familiarity with the event under study, the type of task, and possible learning processes.ConclusionThe last part of the article discusses the implications of the results of the reviewed studies for the two main current hypotheses on the nature of intuitive physics, namely, that intuitive physics may be based on sub-optimal heuristics or may be based on the internalization of physical laws.