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International audience; In the present study, we explore how reading habits (e.g., reading from left to right in French or reading from right to left in Arabic) influence the scanning and the construction of mental models in spatial reasoning. For instance, when participants are given a problem like A is to the left of B; B is to the left of C, what is the relation between A and C? They are assumed to construct the model: A B C. If reading habits influence the scanning process, then readers of French should inspect models from left to right, whereas readers of Arabic should inspect them from right to left. The prediction following this analysis is that readers of French should be more inclined to produce “left” conclusions (i.e., A is to the left of C), whereas readers of Arabic should be more inclined to produce “right” conclusions (i.e., C is to the right of A). Furthermore, one may expect that readers of French show a greater ease in constructing models following a left-to-right direction than models following a right-to-left direction, whereas an opposite pattern might be expected for readers of Arabic. We tested these predictions in two experiments involving French and Yemeni participants. Experiment 1 investigated the formulation of conclusions from spatial premises, and Experiment 2, which was based on non-linguistic stimuli, examined the time required to construct mental models from left to right and from right to left. Our results show clear differences between the two groups. As expected, the French sample showed a strong left-to-right bias, but the Yemeni sample did not show the reverse bias. Results are discussed in terms of cultural influences and universal mechanisms.

Using eye-tracking methodology, the current study investigates how people look at faces in the context of a social hierarchy. The first goal of the study was to characterize how participants distribute their attentional resources to a set of faces displayed on a vertical hierarchical scale including three social ranks (high, middle and low). In the first phase of the experiment, participants had to learn a hierarchy based on performance in competitive games. The participants’ rank, the other players’ rank, and the spatial orientation of the scale (highest social rank at the top of the vertical scale vs. highest social rank at the bottom) were manipulated. The results revealed that participants looked more at other players who occupy the highest than the lowest social rank but did not look more at another player who was ranked higher than lower than themselves when that player was in the middle position. Hence, participants were more sensitive to the highest vs. lowest rank contrast than to the higher vs. lower rank contrast. The results also revealed an influence of spatial orientation of the scale: less visual attention was allocated to the highest-ranking players when they appeared at the bottom than at the top of the spatial scale. The second goal of the study was to investigate how participants explored the face of each player. This was addressed in the second phase of the experiment, in which participants were presented with each player’s face individually. The results did not show any effect of players’ rank but revealed that in some circumstances, participants in the higher-ranking position were less likely to allocate visual resources to other players.

International audience; Objectives: To evaluate the impact of nonviolent communication (NVC) training on five aspects of medical students' empathy skills using implicit and explicit measures. Methods: 312 third-year French medical students were randomly allocated to an intervention group (n = 123) or a control group (n = 189). The intervention group received 2.5 days of NVC training. For each group, empathy-related skills were measured implicitly using three cognitive tests (Visuo-Spatial Perspective Taking, Privileged Knowledge, Empathy for Pain evaluation) and explicitly using two self-rating questionnaires (Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy, Empathy Quotient). Both groups completed tests and questionnaires before (pre-test) and three months after training (post-test). Responses were collected via online software, and data were analyzed using paired linear mixed models and Bayes Factors. Results: We found a significant increase in the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE) score between pre-and post-tests in the intervention group compared to the control group (linear mixed models: 0.95 points [0.17, 1.73], t(158) = 2.39, p < 0.05), and an expected gender effect whereby females had higher JSPE scores (1.57 points [0.72, 2.42], t(262) =-3.62, p < 0.001). There was no interaction between these two factors. Conclusions: Our results show that brief training in nonviolent communication improves subjective empathy three months after training. These results are promising for the long-term effectiveness of NVC training on medical students' empathy and call for the introduction of NVC training in medical school. Further studies should investigate whether longer training will produce larger and longer-lasting benefits.

International audience; Very early on, children understand the hierarchical dimension of the social environment and use a variety of cues to guess who has more power in an interaction. A crucial aspect of power perception lies in the evaluation of high-power and low-power individuals. The current study examined the evaluation of power by preschoolers through social influence. Past research has shown that preschoolers take social category information into account when expressing their preferences. In particular, they tend align their preferences with those of same-gender and same-age individuals. In the current study, 4- and 5-year-old children were presented with a power interaction between two children through body postures and were asked whether they would prefer the same items as those preferred by the high-power child or those preferred by the low-power child. Overall, the participants did not choose the items preferred by the high-power child significantly more often than those preferred by the low-power child. However, unexpected gender effects were found and indicated that the power asymmetry influenced more male than female participants. Indeed, when they saw a power interaction between two boys (Experiments 1 and 2), male participants aligned their choices with those of the high-power boy more than with those of the low-power boy. However, when male participants saw an interaction between two girls (Experiment 3), an opposite pattern was observed: they aligned their choices with those of the low-power girl more than with those of the high-power girl. In contrast, in the three experiments, there were approximately as many girls who aligned their preferences with those of the high-power child as there were girls who aligned their preferences with those of the low-power child. The current study reveals the importance of taking gender into account, both at the level of participants and stimuli, in the evaluation of power by preschoolers.

Someone asked ‘What time is it?' when her watch reads 3:08 is likely to answer ‘It is 3:10.' We argue that a fundamental factor that explains such rounding is a psychological disposition to give an answer that, while not necessarily strictly truthful or accurate, is an optimally relevant one (in the sense of relevance theory) i.e. an answer from which hearers can derive the consequences they care about with minimal effort. A rounded answer is easier to process and may carry the same consequences as one that is accurate to the minute. Hence rounding is often a way of optimising relevance. Three simple experiments give support and greater precision to the view that relevance is more important than strict truthfulness in verbal communication.

Summary : The pragmatic perspective in the study of reasoning and rationality. Solving a reasoning problem not only requires representing a set of premises and deriving conclusions from it but also requires interpreting the premises. This latter point has been rarely taken into account by traditional approaches to human reasoning. This article presents how linguistic pragmatics helps to understand the way premises used typically in reasoning tasks are interpreted. It provides several theoretical frameworks and presents a detailed review of studies revealing the influence of pragmatic factors in reasoning. Consequently, the analysis shows that some erroneous answers observed in many tasks are not due to a deficiency in reasoning but resuit from a discrepancy between the interpretation of the participant and that of the experimenter. Key words : psychology of reasoning, rationality, pragmatics, logic, conversation., Résumé Pour résoudre un problème de raisonnement présenté dans le contexte du laboratoire il faut non seulement représenter les prémisses et en dériver des conclusions mais il faut aussi interpréter les prémisses. Les approches traditionnelles du raisonnement ont rarement pris en compte cet aspect. L'article présente comment la pragmatique linguistique permet de comprendre la manière dont les prémisses utilisées dans les tâches de raisonnement sont interprétées. Il expose plusieurs cadres théoriques et présente une revue détaillée des études qui révèlent l'influence des facteurs pragmatiques dans le raisonnement. En conséquence, l'analyse montre que certaines erreurs observées dans de nombreuses tâches ne sont pas dues à une déficience inférentielle mais résultent d'une divergence entre l'interprétation du sujet et celle de l'expérimentateur. Mots-clés : psychologie du raisonnement, rationalité, pragmatique, logique, conversation., Van der Henst Jean-Baptiste. La perspective pragmatique dans l'étude du raisonnement et de la rationalité. In: L'année psychologique. 2002 vol. 102, n°1. pp. 65-108.

Four experiments examined the strategies that individuals develop in sentential reasoning. They led to the discovery of five different strategies. According to the theory proposed in the paper, each of the strategies depends on component tactics, which all normal adults possess, and which are based on mental models. Reasoners vary their use of tactics in ways that have no deterministic account. This variation leads different individuals to assemble different strategies, which include the construction of incremental diagrams corresponding to mental models, and the pursuit of the consequences of a single model step by step. Moreover, the difficulty of a problem (i.e., the number of mental models required by the premises) predisposes reasoners towards certain strategies. Likewise, the sentential connectives in the premises also bias reasoners towards certain strategies, e.g., conditional premises tend to elicit reasoning step by step whereas disjunctive premises tend to elicit incremental diagrams.

International audience; Recognition of social hierarchy is a key feature that helps us navigate through our complex social environment. Neuroimaging studies have identified brain structures involved in the processing of hierarchical stimuli but the precise temporal dynamics of brain activity associated with such processing remains largely unknown. Here, we used electroencephalography to examine the effect of social hierarchy on neural responses elicited by faces. In contrast to previous studies, the key manipulation was that a hierarchical context was constructed, not by varying facial expressions, but by presenting neutral-expression faces in a game setting. Once the performance-based hierarchy was established, participants were presented with high-rank, middle-rank and low-rank player faces and had to evaluate the rank of each face with respect to their own position. Both event-related potentials and task-related oscillatory activity were investigated. Three main findings emerge from the study. First, the experimental manipulation had no effect on the early N170 component, which may suggest that hierarchy did not modulate the structural encoding of neutral-expression faces. Second, hierarchy significantly modulated the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) within a 400-700 ms time-window, with more a prominent LPP occurring when the participants processed the face of the highest-rank player. Third, high-rank faces were associated with the highest reduction of alpha power. Taken together these findings provide novel electrophysiological evidence for enhanced allocation of attentional resource in the presence of high-rank faces. At a broader level, this study brings new insights into the neural processing underlying social categorization.