L'enfant en situation de handicap intellectuel et ses parents : quels liens d'attachement pendant la période scolaire ?

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Animacy effects in episodic memory: do imagery processes really play a role?

International audience; Animates are remembered better than inanimates because the former are ultimately more important for fitness than the latter. What, however, are the proximate mechanisms underpinning this effect? We focused on imagery processes as one proximate explanation. We tested whether animacy effects are related to the vividness of mental images (Study 1), or to the dynamic/motoric nature of mental images corresponding to animate words (Study 2). The findings showed that: (1) Animates are not estimated to be more vivid than inanimates; (2) The potentially more dynamic nature of the representations of animates does not seem to be a factor making animates more memorable than inan…

Mental representation of arm motion dynamics in children and adolescents.

International audience; Motor imagery, i.e., a mental state during which an individual internally represents an action without any overt motor output, is a potential tool to investigate action representation during development. Here, we took advantage of the inertial anisotropy phenomenon to investigate whether children can generate accurate motor predictions for movements with varying dynamics. Children (9 and 11 years), adolescents (14 years) and young adults (21 years) carried-out actual and mental arm movements in two different directions in the horizontal plane: rightwards (low inertia) and leftwards (high inertia). We recorded and compared actual and mental movement times. We found th…

Drawing and the non-verbal mind: A Life-Span Perspective

1. Contemporary enquiries into a long-standing domain: drawing research Chris Lange-Kuttner and Annie Vinter Part I. Self, Symbols and Intention: 2. Understanding reflections of self and other objects Kim Bard 3. Drawing production, drawing re-experience and drawing re-cognition Josephine Ross 4. Style and other factors affecting children's recognition of their own drawings Robin N. Campbell, Pauline A. Duncan, Anita L. Harrison and Lynne C. Mathewson 5. Children's understanding of the dual nature of pictures Richard Jolley 6. Pictorial intention, action and interpretation Norman H. Freeman and Esther Adi-Japha Part II. Syntax, Space Systems and Projection: 7. The interaction of biomechanic…

The self-organizing consciousness as an alternative model of the mind

Through the concept of self-organizing consciousness (SOC), we posit that the dynamic of the mind stems from the recurrent interplay between the properties of conscious experiences and the properties of the world, hence making it unnecessary to postulate the existence of an unconscious mental level. In contrast, arguments are provided by commentators for the need for a functional level of organization located between the neural and the conscious. Other commentaries challenge us concerning the ability of our model to account for specific phenomena in the domains of language, reasoning, incubation, and creativity. The possibility of unconscious semantic access and other alleged instances of a…

Implicit learning shapes new conscious percepts and representations

We present here the lineaments of a new account of implicit learning, an account that does not rely on the notion of “implicit knowledge.” In this account, improved performance depends on the action of unconscious mechanisms that structure the phenomenal, conscious experience of the world. This integrative view makes groundless the search for dissociations between conscious and unconscious influences that has been at the core of the research on implicit learning and memory. We contrast this view, on the one hand, to Dienes and Berry’s (1997) proposal, which defines implicit learning by analogy with subliminal perception, and, on the other, to Neal and Hesketh’s (1997) episodic account, in w…

Forme versus texture de stimuli tactiles élémentaires : quelle dimension est privilégiée par l’enfant aveugle ou voyant ?

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La reconnaissance de son image chez l'enfant et l'animal

Le problème de la reconnaissance de son image a passionné et intrigué de tout temps les psychologues de l'enfant qui ont recueilli de très nombreuses observations naturalistes. Ce problème a aussi fait l'objet de diverses recherches expérimentales qui ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives sur la manière d'aborder ce thème. On trouvera dans cet ouvrage une sélection de recherches expérimentales et une présentation de points de vue théoriques qui nous ont paru le mieux illustrer les conceptions actuelles des psychologues sur ce thème. Les principales contributions de la psychologie de langue française à l'étude du problème de la reconnaissance de soi, tant d'un point de vue théorique que expérime…

Feature creation as a byproduct of attentional processing

Attributing the creation of new features to categorization requirements implies that the exemplars displayed are correctly assigned to their category. This constraint limits the scope of Schyns et al.'s proposal to supervised learning. We present data suggesting that this constraint is unwarranted and we argue that feature creation is better thought of as a byproduct of the attentional, on-line processing of incoming information.

Mentally Simulated Motor Actions in Children

The present study investigated the effects of age and arm preference on motor imagery ability. Children (groups: 6.5, 8.3, and 10.1 years) and young adults (22.4 years) physically or mentally performed a drawing motor task with the right or the left arm. Imagery ability, accessed by the timing correspondence between executed and imagined movements, was poor at 6 and 8 years but improved at age 10, and was robust in adults. The arm condition had no influence on imagery ability. We suggest that maturation of parietal and prefrontal cortices during development may contribute to improvement of action representation.

Decline in motor prediction in elderly subjects: right versus left arm differences in mentally simulated motor actions.

This study investigates the effects of age upon the temporal features of executed and imagined movements performed with the dominant (D; right) and nondominant (ND; left) arms. Thirty right-handed subjects were divided into two groups: (i) the young group (n=15; mean age: 22.5+/-2.5 years) and (ii) the elderly group (n=15; mean age: 70.2+/-2.2 years). The motor task, involving arm pointing movements among four pairs of targets (.5cm, 1cm, 1.5cm and 2cm), imposed strong spatiotemporal constraints. During overt performance, young and elderly subjects modulated movement duration according to the size of targets, despite the fact that movement speed decreased with age as well as in the left arm…

L’écriture chez l’enfant : apprentissage, troubles et évaluation

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Mentally represented motor actions in normal aging. I. Age effects on the temporal features of overt and covert execution of actions.

The present study examines the temporal features of overt and covert actions as a function of normal aging. In the first experiment, we tested three motor tasks (walking, sit-stand-sit, arm pointing) that did not imply any particular spatiotemporal constraints, and we compared the duration of their overt and covert execution in three different groups of age (mean ages: 22.5, 66.2 and 73.4 years). We found that the ability of generating motor images did not differentiate elderly subjects from young subjects. Precisely, regarding overt and covert durations, subjects presented similarities for the walking and pointing tasks and dissimilarities for the stand-sit-stand task. Furthermore, the tim…

L'imitation chez le nouveau-né : imitation, représentation et mouvement dans les premiers mois de la vie

International audience; Cet ouvrage opère un renversement de la théorie piagétienne, et s'attache à démontrer que la présence de représentation précède l'imitation et s'efforce de délimiter la spécificité de ses représentations.

Attachement, comportement social et attribution d'intentions dans la trisomie 21

International audience; Cette étude s’inscrit dans le champ des recherches sur le développement sociocognitif des enfants déficients intellectuels porteurs d’une trisomie 21 (T21). Elle porte sur les liens entre les représentations d’attachement et le comportement social avec les pairs, ainsi que sur les liens entre les représentations d’attachement et l’attribution d’intentions dans des situations de provocation où l’intention du personnage qui cause le dommage est ambigüe.

Implicit Learning in Children Is Not Related to Age: Evidence from Drawing Behavior

Three experiments are reported on implicit learning in 432 children between the ages of 4 and 10 years, using a new paradigm ("the neutral parameter procedure") based on drawing behavior. The first two experiments demonstrated that children modified their drawing behavior following specially devised practice in such a way that these modifications could not be viewed as the result of deliberate adaptive strategies. The third experiment showed that these behavioral modifications lasted for at least 1 hr after the training phase. No age-related differences appeared in the experiments. A comparison of children's data with similar adults' data also failed to reveal any age differences. These res…

The representation of gravitational force during drawing movements of the arm

The purpose of the present experiment was to study the way in which the central nervous system (CNS) represents gravitational force (GF) during vertical drawing movements of the arm. Movements in four different directions: (a) upward vertical (0 degrees), (b) upward oblique (45 degrees), (c) downward vertical (180 degrees) and (d) downward oblique (135 degrees), and at two different speeds, normal and fast, were executed by nine subjects. Data analysis focused upon arm movement kinematics in the frontal plane and gravitational torques (GTs) exerted around the shoulder joint. Regardless of movement direction, subjects showed straight-line paths for both speed conditions. In addition, movemen…

Un modèle développemental des capacités d’élaboration: la redescription des représentations

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Hostile intention attribution among preschoolers with or without conduct disorder: Links with attachment representation

International audience

Implicit learning, development, and education

International audience; The present chapter focuses on implicit learning processes, and aims at showing that these processes could be used to design new methods of education or reeducation. After a brief definition of what we intend by implicit learning, we will show that these processes operate efficiently in development, from infancy to aging. Then, we will discuss the question of their resistance to neurological or psychiatric diseases. Finally, in a last section, we will comment on their potential use within an applied perspective.

Advances in Handwriting and Drawing: a multidisciplinary approach

Choix de communications faites à la sixième Conférence internationale sur l'écriture manuscrite et le dessin, Paris, juillet 1993, organisée par l'ENST et l'URA 820 du CNRS; International audience

The formation of structurally relevant units in artificial grammar learning

A total of 78 adult participants were asked to read a sample of strings generated by a finite state grammar and, immediately after reading each string, to mark the natural segmentation positions with a slash bar. They repeated the same task after a phase of familiarization with the material, which consisted, depending on the group involved, of learning items by rote, performing a short term matching task, or searching for the rules of the grammar. Participants formed the same number of cognitive units before and after the training phase, thus indicating that they did not tend to form increasingly large units. However, the number of different units reliably decreased, whatever the task that…

Contemporary enquiries into a traditional domain of research: drawing

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Is there an implicit level of representation?

Graphic syntax and representational development

International audience; This chapter focuses specifically on the relationships between syntax and cognitive development, particularly representational development. Vinter, Picard and Fernandes promote the take-home message that changes in drawing behaviour during development result from changes in the size of the cognitive units or mental representations used to plan behaviour, and in the capacity to manage part-whole relationships. This hypothesis is first illustrated by reviewing studies in which children's adherence to the graphic rules when they copy elementary or complex figures is assessed. The authors also examine children's syntactical behaviour at a more global level, characterizin…

Representational flexibility in children's drawings: Effects of age and verbal instructions

This study aims to investigate representational and syntactical flexibility in children's drawing behaviour, and the extent to which changes introduced at both representational and syntactical levels are related to age or can be induced by contextual manipulations. A Deletion task required three age groups of 5-, 7- and 9-year-old children to draw objects that had been rendered partially invisible, thanks to magic transformations. Two different verbal instructions about what was to remain visible in the objects, and two different objects, one regularly and one non-regularly drawn, were designed to investigate contextual sensitivity in children's representational and syntactical behaviour re…

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

Resume Cette etude aborde les capacites de transfert lors d'apprentissage implicite chez des preadolescents avec retard mental (RM) et des enfants tout-venant. Une tâche simple est utilisee pour evaluer le transfert d'un comportement graphique appris implicitement. Les resultats montrent que la modification comportementale induite par l'apprentissage implicite peut etre transferee sur un nouveau support, dans des proportions similaires chez les participants avec et sans RM de meme âge mental (AM). Cet effet de transfert est independant du degre de RM. L'interpretation theorique fait reference a la robustesse de l'apprentissage implicite (Reber, 1989), et au phenomene « d'attenuation du tran…

Lo sviluppo sensomotorio del lattante

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Verbal definitions of familiar objects in blind children reflect their peculiar perceptual experience

Background The aim of the present study was to examine to what extent the verbal definitions of familiar objects produced by blind children reflect their peculiar perceptual experience and, in consequence, differ from those produced by sighted children. Methods Ninety-six visually impaired children, aged between 6 and 14 years, and 32 age-matched sighted children had to define 10 words denoting concrete animate or inanimate familiar objects. Results The blind children evoked the tactile and auditory characteristics of objects and expressed personal perceptual experiences in their definitions. The sighted children relied on visual perception, and produced more visually oriented verbalism. In…

Learning implicitly to produce avoided behaviours

The literature on repetition processing reveals an intriguing paradox between the particular salience of repetitions, which makes them easy to learn, and a tendency to avoid them when generating sequences. The aim of this experiment was to study the extent to which children can learn to produce these avoided behaviours by means of an artificial grammar paradigm using generation tests with implicit or explicit instructions. The analysis of the control group's performance confirmed the presence of a spontaneous tendency to avoid generating repetitions. A comparison with chance revealed that the children learned to produce repetitions in the explicit test but not in the implicit test. However…

The self-organizing consciousness

We propose that the isomorphism generally observed between the representations composing our momentary phenomenal experience and the structure of the world is the end-product of a progressive organization that emerges thanks to elementary associative processes that take our conscious representations themselves as the stuff on which they operate, a thesis that we summarize in the concept of Self-Organizing Consciousness (SOC).

Imposer des contraintes de taille ou de vitesse sur l’écriture chez l’enfant: Des bénéfices ou non?

Introduction La maîtrise des habiletés élémentaires d’écriture, à savoir la réalisation des mouvements de formation des lettres, est un élément important de la réussite scolaire. Fayol et Miret (2005) ont, par exemple, montré que les enfants ayant une moindre maîtrise graphique sont moins performants à une épreuve de dictée. Ainsi, l’échec dans l’apprentissage de la production des lettres a des répercussions sur les processus de plus haut niveau impliqués dans la production de textes (Berning...