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We tend to always underestimate our memory. We blame it for its mishaps but never praise it for its successes. Nonetheless, one must admit that memory has its flaws and its capacities, mostly regarding recollections, weaken with time and age. In the grounded cognition framework, memory is not just a tool to access our past. Memory is mainly turned towards the present and it helps us adapt to each moment of our daily lives thanks to the accumulation of the experiences we live and that become references. Memory is made up of sensori-motor traces of these experiences (Versace, Labeye, Badard, & Rose, 2009) and its effectiveness is thus defined by the potential of a situation to reactivate the properties stored in memory and that are relevant for the present situation. Knowledge emerges the reactivation from but the effectiveness of the reactivation depends mostly on the link between the different properties of an event at the moment of their encoding in memory. Within Act-in, a multiple-traces functional memory model (Versace et al., 2014), the formation of this link rests upon the integration mechanism.Several factors, such as performing an action or experiencing an emotion, are known to influence on memory effectiveness. However, this influence has only be rarely investigated in a grounded approach of memory. We formulated the hypothesis that the influence of these factors on memory reflects their impact on the integration mechanism. The first objective of this thesis was to assess if action and emotion were able to improve integration. This mechanism operates on different levels of association between the properties of an event: integration of the properties of an item and integration of the item to its context; the work reported in the present document aimed to identify a clear pattern regarding the effects of action and emotion on these different levels.Finally, we support the hypothesis formulated by several authors (e.g. Benjamin, 2000) according to which the memory difficulties encountered in normal aging are caused by a deficit in the formation of associations between the different elements of an event in memory. The associative deficit can be translated in terms of an integration deficit and our last objective was then to assess if action and emotion, through their influence on integration, could reduce the memory deficits observed in older adults. To test these hypotheses, we used a paradigm designed to evaluate the performances on the different levels of integration in one individual manipulating at the same time the actions performed by the participants at encoding or the emotional valence of the material both in young and older adults., Nous sous-estimons sans cesse notre mémoire. Nous la blâmons pour ses déboires mais ne la louons jamais pour ses succès. Toutefois, il faut bien l'admettre, notre mémoire flanche et ses capacités, notamment concernant l'évocation de souvenirs, faiblissent avec le temps et l'avancée en âge. Le cadre de la cognition incarnée propose que notre mémoire n'est pas simplement un outil nous permettant d'accéder à notre passé. Elle est avant tout tournée vers le présent et nous aide à appréhender chaque moment de notre vie quotidienne grâce à l'accumulation des expériences que nous vivons et qui nous servent de référence. La mémoire conserve des traces sensori-motrices de ces expériences (Versace, Labeye, Badard, & Rose, 2009) et son efficacité se définit alors par la capacité d'une situation à réactiver des propriétés stockées en mémoire et pertinentes par rapport à cette situation. C'est de cette réactivation que découle l'émergence des connaissances mais l'efficacité de cette réactivation dépend principalement du lien entre les différentes propriétés lorsqu'elles sont encodées au sein des traces des événements auxquels elles appartiennent. Au sein du modèle fonctionnel de mémoire à traces-multiples Act-in (Versace et al., 2014), l'établissement de ce lien repose sur le mécanisme d'intégration intra-trace. Certains facteurs, tels que la réalisation d'une action ou l'expérience d'une émotion, sont connus pour leurs effets sur l'efficacité de la mémoire. Cependant, ces effets n'ont que très peu été étudiés en rapport avec une conception incarnée de la mémoire. Nous émettions l'hypothèse que l'influence de ces facteurs sur la mémoire reflétait principalement leur impact sur le fonctionnement du mécanisme d'intégration. Le premier objectif de ce travail de thèse était donc d'évaluer si l'action et l'émotion permettaient d'améliorer le fonctionnement du mécanisme d'intégration. Ce mécanisme pouvant opérer à différents niveaux d'association entre les propriétés d'un événement : intégration des propriétés d'un item ou intégration de cet item à son contexte; ces travaux avaient également pour objectif de mettre en évidence un pattern clair vis-à-vis des effets de l'action et de l'émotion sur ces différents niveaux. Enfin, nous soutenons l'hypothèse émise par certains auteurs (e.g. Benjamin, 2000) selon laquelle les difficultés mnésiques rencontrées lors du vieillissement normal sont dues à un déficit dans l'établissement d'associations en mémoire entre différents éléments d'un événements. Ce déficit associatif peut se traduire en termes de déficit du mécanisme d'intégration et le dernier objectif de ces travaux consistait à évaluer si l'action et l'émotion, de par leur influence sur le mécanisme d'intégration, pouvaient réduire les déficits mnésiques observés chez les personnes âgées. Afin de tester ces hypothèses, nous avons employé un paradigme permettant d'obtenir des scores de performances sur les différents niveaux d'intégration chez un même individu tout en manipulant les effets de la réalisation d'actions au moment de l'encodage de l'information ou en manipulant la valence émotionnel du matériel employé et ce chez des adultes jeunes et âgés.

International audience; The aim of this study was to characterize the behavior of older peo- ple when intercepting a moving gap, with reference to that pro- duced by younger people. Participants were asked to intercept a moving inter-vehicular space within a train of vehicles, by modulat- ing their speed if necessary. Five initial distances to the interception location were manipulated (Offset), without the knowledge of the participants, requiring distinct speed regulations. The analyses focused on displacements kinematics as well as on the associated visual information taking strategies. The results indicate several simi- larities in the behaviors produced by two populations. Functional speed regulations are initiated early and persist until the intercep- tion. These regulations allow for safe interception. The visual strat- egies deployed by the older participants are also relatively close to those of the younger participants, with the main areas of interest located on the vehicles located upstream of the interval. The results also reveal differences between the two populations. The regulations produced by older drivers are initiated late in negative Offset giving rise to some extent to unsafe behavior. These results are discussed in relation to the decrease in motion detection thresholds with age. Our dataset could be particularly useful in view of the design of driver assistance systems for older drivers.

International audience; Causative variants in APP, PSEN1 or PSEN2 account for a majority of cases of autosomal dominant early-onset Alzheimer disease (ADEOAD, onset before 65 years). Variant detection rates in other EOAD patients, that is, with family history of late-onset AD (LOAD) (and no incidence of EOAD) and sporadic cases might be much lower. We analyzed the genomes from 264 patients using whole-exome sequencing (WES) with high depth of coverage: 90 EOAD patients with family history of LOAD and no incidence of EOAD in the family and 174 patients with sporadic AD starting between 51 and 65 years. We found three PSEN1 and one PSEN2 causative, probably or possibly causative variants in four patients (1.5%). Given the absence of PSEN1, PSEN2 and APP causative variants, we investigated whether these 260 patients might be burdened with protein-modifying variants in 20 genes that were previously shown to cause other types of dementia when mutated. For this analysis, we included an additional set of 160 patients who were previously shown to be free of causative variants in PSEN1, PSEN2 and APP: 107 ADEOAD patients and 53 sporadic EOAD patients with an age of onset before 51 years. In these 420 patients, we detected no variant that might modify the function of the 20 dementia-causing genes. We conclude that EOAD patients with family history of LOAD and no incidence of EOAD in the family or patients with sporadic AD starting between 51 and 65 years have a low variant-detection rate in AD genes.

International audience; Objectives: We describe the largest series of patients with TARDBP mutations presenting with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and review the cases in the literature to precisely characterize FTD diseases associated with this genotype.Methods: The phenotypic characteristics of 29 TARDBP patients, including 10 new French and Dutch cases and 19 reviewed from the literature, were evaluated.Results: The most frequent phenotype was a behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), but a significant proportion (40%) of our patients had semantic (svFTD) or nonfluent variants (nfvFTD) at onset; and svFTD was significantly more frequent in TARDBP carriers than in other FTD genotypes (p < 0.001). Remarkably, only a minority (40%) of our patients secondarily developed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Two patients carried a homozygous mutation but strikingly different phenotypes (bvFTD and ALS) indicating that homozygosity does not result in a specific phenotype. Earlier age at onset in children than parent's generations, mimicking an apparent “anticipation” (21.8 ± 9.3 years, p = 0.001), and possible reduced penetrance were present in most families.Conclusions: This study enlarges the phenotypic spectrum of TARDBP and will have important clinical implications: (1) FTD can be the only clinical manifestation of TARDBP mutations; (2) Initial language or semantic disorders might be indicative of a specific genotype; (3) Mutations should be searched in all FTD phenotypes after exclusion of major genes, even in the absence of ALS in the proband or in family history; (4) reduced penetrance and clinical variability should be considered to deliver appropriate genetic counseling.

International audience; Coxiella burnetii, also known as the causal agent of Q fever, is a zoonotic pathogen infecting humans and several animal species. Here, we investigated the epidemiological context of C. burnetii from an area in the Hérault department in southern France, using the One Health paradigm. In total, 13 human cases of Q fever were diagnosed over the last three years in an area comprising four villages. Serological and molecular investigations conducted on the representative animal population, as well as wind data, indicated that some of the recent cases are likely to have originated from a sheepfold, which revealed bacterial contamination and a seroprevalence of 47.6%. However, the clear-cut origin of human cases cannot be ruled out in the absence of molecular data from the patients. Multi-spacer typing based on dual barcoding nanopore sequencing highlighted the occurrence of a new genotype of C. burnetii. In addition, the environmental contamination appeared to be widespread across a perimeter of 6 km due to local wind activity, according to the seroprevalence detected in dogs (12.6%) and horses (8.49%) in the surrounding populations. These findings were helpful in describing the extent of the exposed area and thus supporting the use of dogs and horses as valuable sentinel indicators for monitoring Q fever. The present data clearly highlighted that the epidemiological surveillance of Q fever should be reinforced and improved.

International audience; Anisotropic gold nanoparticles and in particular with shapes exhibiting tips are known to present an extremely strong localized electromagnetic field. This field is mostly located at the top of the tips and can be used in various optical applications. Moreover, as a consequence of their anisotropy, they present two plasmon resonance bands corresponding to the transverse and longitudinal resonance modes. Tuning the aspect ratio it becomes possible to display SPR bands near the near infrared region. This was particularly investigated in the case of nanorods and also for bipyramids. In this paper we report a high yield synthesis approach that allows one to precisely control the aspect ratio of bipyramids and to elongate the structure until they adopt a javelin-like aspect. We were able to prepare nano-javelins with surface plasmon resonances up to 1850 nm, opening important perspectives in terms of optical applications in the NIR and IR regions. The synthetic methods are fully reported and the optical properties were correlated with the theoretical approach, taking into consideration not only the aspect ratio but also the truncation of the nano-objects.

International audience; specific memory accuracy memory discrimination sensory degradation trace overlapping Similar events may reduce the likelihood of the cognitive system to accurately remember a specific memory. Similarity leads to overlap between mnemonic traces, which, in turn, interferes with the discrimination of the traces. Therefore, it is important to determine how and when overlapping is detrimental to the discrimination between the traces. According to the Act-In memory model, the specificity of a memory trace is determined by the sensory overlap as well as by the number of participating sensory modalities on which overlap occurs (unimodal vs. multimodal). Increasing overlap should only be critical when the memory traces are the most difficult to discriminate from each other, which is more likely for unimodal than multimodal traces. As such, multimodal events might be more efficient than unimodal events to allow memory specificity. In two experiments, participants had to reproduce visuospatial sequences in a 2 × 2 matrix. The level of sensory overlap (high vs. low) and the number of components on which overlap occurs in the memory traces (unimodal vs. multimodal-discrimination) were manipulated. The results showed that memory span was lower when the visual overlap was at its highest, but more significantly, when trace discrimination was unimodal (Experiments 1 and 2). Moreover, for visually richer stimuli, visual overlap was shown to be detrimental to specific memory only in a condition of visual degradation. Taken together, the results suggest that the sensory overlap is essentially critical to specific memory when it is at its highest, which is the most likely for low richness unimodal stimuli.

Our technologies have never ceased to evolve, allowing our lineage to expand its habitat all over the Earth, and even to explore space. This phenomenon, called cumulative technological culture (CTC), has been studied extensively, notably using mathematical and computational models. However, the cognitive capacities needed for the emergence and maintenance of CTC remain largely unknown. In the literature, the focus is put on the distinctive ability of humans to imitate, with an emphasis on our unique social skills underlying it, namely theory of mind (ToM). A recent alternative view, called the technical-reasoning hypothesis, proposes that our unique ability to understand the physical world (i.e., technical reasoning; TR) might also play a critical role in CTC. Here, we propose a simple model, based on the micro-society paradigm, that integrates these two hypotheses. The model is composed of a simple environment with only one technology that is transmitted between generations of individuals. These individuals have two cognitive skills: ToM and TR, and can learn in different social-learning conditions to improve the technology. The results of the model show that TR can support both the transmission of information and the modification of the technology, and that ToM is not necessary for the emergence of CTC although it allows a faster growth rate.

International audience; Rehabilitation studies in developmental dyslexia (DD) are generally based on the single-cause hypothesis of alterations either in phonological processing, visuo-attentional processing or cross-modal integration. However, many studies have shown that the cause of DD is multifactorial and that most dyslexic readers (DR) have underlying cognitive deficits in multiple areas. The originality of this intervention is to propose a rehabilitation program simultaneously addressing phonological, visual-attentional and cross-modal integration using a systematic, individualized and intensive training during 6 months. This multicentre, randomized, cross-over longitudinal study was conducted in three phases with 59 DR aged 8 to 13 years. In the first phase, the DR received weekly speech therapy consultations without intensive trainingfor two months. In the second phase, the DR were randomized into two groups and received, in addition to their weekly follow-up, three types of intensive computer-based interventions, for two months each. The order of the two initial interventions (phonological and visuo-attentional) is counterbalanced between the two groups, followed by an intermodalintervention. In the third phase, the intensive interventions were stopped and the weekly consultations were maintained for two months. Preliminary results confirm that an intensive multimodal intervention has significant positive effects on reading skills and that these effects are maintained after the intervention is stopped. This multimodal remediation program may represent an effective evidence-based therapeutic response in the treatment of DD.; Les études menées pour valider des méthodes de remédiation de la dyslexie développementale (DD) sont généralement fondées sur l'hypothèse d'une cause unique liée à des altérations soit du traitement phonologique, soit du traitement visuo-attentionnel, soit de l'intégration intermodalitaire. Or, de nombreuses études montrent que la cause de la DD est multifactorielle et que la majorité des lecteurs dyslexiques (LD) présentent des déficits cognitifs sous-jacents dans plusieurs domaines. L'originalité de cette intervention est de proposer une approche de remédiation à la fois phonologique, visuo-attentionnelle et intermodalitaire en proposant des programmes d’entraînement systématiques, individualisés et intensifs pendant 6 mois.Cette étude longitudinale multicentrique, randomisée et croisée est menée en trois phases auprès de 59 LD âgés de 8 à 13 ans. Lors de la première phase, les participants bénéficient de consultations hebdomadaires de rééducation orthophonique sans entraînement intensif pendant deux mois. Lors de la deuxième phase, ils sont répartis en deux groupes et bénéficient, en plus de leur suivi hebdomadaire, de trois types d'interventions intensives informatisées, d’une durée de deux mois chacune. L'ordre des deux premières interventions (phonologique et visuo-attentionnelle) est contrebalancé entre les deux groupes puis suivie par une intervention intermodalitaire. Lors de la troisième phase, les interventions intensives sont arrêtées et les consultations hebdomadaires de rééducation orthophonique maintenues pendant deux mois.Des résultats préliminaires confirment des effets significatifs positifs sur les compétences en lecture qui se maintiennent après l’arrêt de l’intervention. Ce programme de remédiation multimodal pourrait représenter une réponse thérapeutique efficace fondée sur les preuves dans le traitement de la DD.

International audience; This quantitative review gives an overview of physical understanding (i.e., the ability to represent and use the laws of physics to interact with the physical world) impairments in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), semantic dementia (SD), and corticobasal syndrome (CBS), as assessed mainly with mechanical problem-solving and tool use tests. This review shows that: (1) SD patients have apraxia of tool use because of semantic tool knowledge deficits, but normal performance in tests of physical understanding; (2) AD and CBS patients show impaired performance in mechanical problem-solving tests, probably not because of intrinsic deficits of physical understanding, but rather because of additional cognitive (AD) or motor impairments (CBS); (3) As a result, the performance in mechanical problem-solving tests is not a good predictor of familiar tool use in dementia; (4) Actual deficits of physical understanding are probably observed only in late stages of neurodegenerative diseases, and associated with functional loss.

International audience; The noisy computation hypothesis of developmental dyslexia (DD) is particularly appealing because it can explain deficits across a variety of domains, such as temporal, auditory, phonological, visual and attentional processes. A key prediction is that noisy computations lead to more variable and less stable word representations. A way to test this hypothesis is through repetition of words, that is, when there is noise in the system, the neural signature of repeated stimuli should be more variable. The hypothesis was tested in an functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment with dyslexic and typical readers by repeating words twelve times. Variability measures were computed both at the behavioral and neural levels. At the behavioral level, we compared the standard deviation of reaction time distributions of repeated words. At the neural level, in addition to standard univariate analyses and measures of intra-item variability, we also used multivariate pattern analyses (representational similarity and classification) to find out whether there was evidence for noisier representations in dyslexic readers compared to typical readers. Results showed that there were no significant differences between the two groups in any of the analyses despite robust results within each group (i.e., high representational similarity between repeated words, good classification of words vs. non-words). In summary, there was no evidence in favor of the idea that dyslexic readers would have noisier neural representations than typical readers.

International audience; Emotional processing deficits are key features in major depressive disorder (MDD). Neuroimaging studies indicate that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) plays a pivotal role in both depressive symptoms and emotional processing. Recently, transcranial Direct Current Stimulations (tDCS) applied over the DLPFCs have held the promise to alleviate the symptoms in patients with MDD, but the effect on emotional processing in the patients is unclear. Here, we investigated the effect of a single session of tDCS over the DLPFCs on the emotional processing in patients with treatment-resistant MDD. In a randomized sham-controlled study, 35 patients received a single 30 min session of either active (2 mA, n = 18) or sham tDCS (n = 17). The anode was placed over the left and the cathode over the right DLPFC. Emotional processing accuracy was measured by a facial emotion recognition (FER) task. We observed an overall improvement in FER performance after the active tDCS, but not the sham tDCS. These exploratory results suggest that a single session of tDCS over the DLPFCs may improve FER in MDD, a crucial function of social cognition. Further studies are needed to investigate whether this acute improvement of FER in response to a single tDCS session could translate into clinical benefits or predict remission following repeated sessions of stimulation.

We describe a large-scale regression study that examines the influence of lexical (word frequency, lexical neighborhood) and sublexical (feedforward and feedback consistency) variables on spelling accuracy among first, second, and third- to fifth-graders. The wordset analyzed contained 3430 French words. Predictors in the stepwise regression analyses were grade-level-based and compiled from child-directed written materials. In all grades, feedforward consistency and word frequency had independent effects. However, whereas the feedforward-consistency contribution remained high and did not vary across grades, the impact of word frequency exhibited a massive jump between first and second grade. Interaction analyses showed that the feedforward-consistency effect was significantly lower for monosyllabic words than for polysyllabic ones, and significantly higher for low-frequency words. The effect of feedback consistency was difficult to clarify. Finally, the feedforward-consistency effects obtained at two different grain sizes suggest that children use more contextual information to spell words as orthographic knowledge develops. The findings are discussed in relation to models of spelling and to the developmental aspects of learning to spell.

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Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning condition characterized by severe and persistent difficulties in written word recognition, decoding and spelling that may impair both text reading fluency and text reading comprehension. Despite this, some adults with dyslexia successfully complete their university studies even though graduating from university involves intensive exposure to long and complex texts. This study examined the cognitive skills underlying both text reading comprehension and text reading fluency (TRF) in a sample of 54 university students with dyslexia and 63 university students without dyslexia, based on a set of tests adapted for an adult population, including listening comprehension, word reading, pseudoword reading (i.e., decoding), phonemic awareness, spelling, visual span, reading span, vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, and general knowledge. The contribution of these skills to text reading fluency and text reading comprehension was examined using stepwise multiplicative linear regression analyses. As far as TRF is concerned, a regression model including word reading, pseudoword reading and spelling best fits the data, while a regression model including listening comprehension, general knowledge and vocabulary best fits the data obtained for text reading comprehension. Overall, these results are discussed in the light of the current literature on adults with dyslexia and both text reading fluency and text reading comprehension.

Much prior research on reading has focused on a specific level of processing, with this often being letters, words, or sentences. Here, for the first time in adult readers, we provide a combined investigation of these three key component processes of reading comprehension. We did so by testing the same group of participants in three tasks thought to reflect processing at each of these levels: alphabetic decision, lexical decision, and grammatical decision. Participants also performed a non-reading classification task, with an aim to partial-out common binary decision processes from the correlations across the three main tasks. We examined the pairwise partial correlations for response times (RTs) in the three reading tasks. The results revealed strong significant correlations across adjacent levels of processing (i.e., letter-word; word-sentence) and a non-significant correlation between non-adjacent levels (letter-sentence). The results provide an important new benchmark for evaluating computational models that describe how letters, words, and sentences contribute to reading comprehension.

International audience; Understanding the evolution of human technology is key to solving the mystery of our origins. Current theories propose that technology evolved through the accumulation of modifications that were mostly transmitted between individuals by blind copying and the selective retention of advantageous variations. An alternative account is that high-fidelity transmission in the context of cumulative technological culture is supported by technical reasoning, which is a reconstruction mechanism that allows individuals to converge to optimal solutions. We tested these two competing hypotheses with a micro-society experiment, in which participants had to optimize a physical system in partial- and degraded-information transmission conditions. Our results indicated an improvement of the system over generations, which was accompanied by an increased understanding of it. The solutions produced tended to progressively converge over generations. These findings show that technical reasoning can bolster high-fidelity transmission through convergent transformations, which highlights its role in the cultural evolution of technology.

Does phonology contribute to effects of orthographically related flankers in the flankers task? In order to answer this question, we implemented the flanker equivalent of a pseudohomophone priming manipulation that has been widely used to demonstrate automatic phonological processing during visual word recognition. In Experiment 1, central target words were flanked on each side by either a pseudohomophone of the target (e.g., roze rose roze), an orthographic control pseudoword (rone rose rone), or an unrelated pseudoword (mirt rose mirt). Both the pseudohomophone and the orthographic control conditions produced faster and more accurate responses to central targets, but performance in these two conditions did not differ significantly. Experiment 2 tested the same stimuli in a masked priming paradigm and replicated the standard finding in French that pseudohomophone primes produce significantly faster responses to target words than orthographic control primes. Therefore, contrary to its impact on masked priming, phonology does not contribute to effects of flanker relatedness, which would appear to be driven primarily by orthographic overlap. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.3758/s13414-020-02023-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

International audience; Great white pelicans (Pelecanus onocrotalus) exhibit life-history parameters and ecological traits thought to be associated with social learning, and advanced cognitive processing more generally. In this study we investigated whether this species can acquire novel behavior socially in a foraging context. Birds from the test group watched a trained conspecific opening an opaque box containing a food reward by using its beak, whereas the control group had no demonstrator but saw the box for an equivalent time span. Individuals from both groups were subsequently allowed access to the box. Subjects of the test group performed significantly better than the control group. This is the first experimental evidence of social learning in a cooperatively hunting bird. Further studies are needed in order to shed light on the factors favoring the evolution of this capacity, by testing different pelican species that vary in their ecology.

International audience; Aim: Lower interoceptive abilities are a characteristic of chronic pain conditions. Social support plays an important role in chronic low back pain (cLBP) but social cognitive skills have rarely been investigated. This study aimed to characterize interoceptive and social cognitive abilities in cLBP and to study the relationship between both domains that have been brought closer together by brain predictive coding models. Materials & methods: Twenty-eight patients with cLBP and 74 matched controls were included. Interoceptive accuracy (Heart Beat Perception Task), sensibility/awareness (Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness) and mental-states inference abilities (Mini-Social Cognition and Emotional Assessment) were assessed. Results: cLBP Patients had lower interoceptive accuracy and mentalizing performance. Conclusion: Less efficient interoceptive accuracy and mentalizing abilities were found in cLBP patients without correlation between these performances.

International audience; In two same-different matching experiments we investigated whether transposed-character effects can be modulated by the horizontal displacement or inter-character spacing of target stimuli (strings of 6 consonants, digits, or symbols). Reference and target stimuli could be identical or differed either by transposing or substituting two characters. Transposition costs (greater difficulty in detecting a difference with transpositions compared with substitutions) were greater for letter stimuli compared to both digit and symbol stimuli in both experiments. In Experiment 1, half of the targets were displayed at the center of the screen and the other half were shifted by two character-positions to the left or to the right, whereas the reference was always presented at the center of the screen. Target displacement made the task harder and caused an increase in transposition costs whatever the type of stimulus. In Experiment 2, all stimuli were presented at the center of the screen and the inter-character spacing of target stimuli was increased by one character space on half of the trials. Increased spacing made the task harder and paradoxically caused an increase in transposition costs, but only significantly so for letter stimuli, and only in the discriminability (d’) measure. These results suggest that target location and inter-character spacing manipulations caused an increase in positional uncertainty during the processing of location-specific complex features prior to activation of a location-invariant representation of character-in-string order. The hypothesized existence of a letter-specific order encoding mechanism accounts for the greater transposition costs seen with letter stimuli, as well as the greater modulation of these effects by an increase in inter-character spacing seen in discriminability (d’).

International audience; Tool behavior might be based on two strategies associated with specific cognitive mechanisms: cued-learning and technical-reasoning strategies. We aimed to explore whether these strategies coexist in young children and whether they are manifest differently through development. We presented 216 3- to 9-year-olds with a vertical maze task consisting in moving a ball from the top to the bottom of a maze. Two tool-use/mechanical actions were possible: rotating action and sliding action. Three conditions were tested, each focused on a different strategy. In the Opaque–Cue condition (cued-learning strategy), children could not see the mechanical action of each tool. Nevertheless, a cue was provided according to the tool needed to solve the problem. In the Transparent–No Cue condition (technical-reasoning strategy), no cue was presented. However, children could see the mechanical actions associated with each tool. In the Transparent–Cue condition (cued-learning and/or technical-reasoning strategies) children saw both the mechanical actions and the cues. Results indicated that the Opaque–Cue and Transparent–Cue conditions were easier than the Transparent–No-Cue condition in all children. These findings stress that children can use either cued learning or technical reasoning to use tools, according to the available information. The behavioral pattern observed in the Transparent–Cue condition suggests that children might be inclined to use technical reasoning even when the task can be solved through cued learning.

ACAPS 2021, 19ème congrès de l'Association des Chercheurs en Activités Physiques et Sportives, Montpellier, FRANCE, 27-/10/2021 - 29/10/2021; This study is part of a project whose main objective is the design of driving assistance systems (ADAS) for elderly people (>65 years old) in order to make their movements safer when approaching an intersection. Indeed, as the figures reported by the ONISR show, crossing an intersection is an accident-prone maneuver responsible for 20% of road deaths in France. The first step of this project was to characterize the behavior of elderly people when crossing intersections in reference to that produced by young subjects.

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When a sequence of written words is presented briefly and participants are asked to report the identity of one of the words, identification accuracy is higher when the words form a correct sentence. Here we examined the extent to which this sentence superiority effect can be modulated by semantic content. The central hypothesis guiding this study is that the sentence superiority effect is primarily a syntactic effect. We therefore predicted little or no modulation of the effect by semantics. The influence of semantic content was measured by comparing the sentence superiority effect obtained with semantically regular sentences (e.g., son amie danse bien [her friend dances well]) and semantically anomalous but syntactically correct sentences (e.g., votre sac boit gros [your bag drinks big]), with effects being measured against ungrammatical scrambled versions of the same words in both cases. We found sentence superiority effects with both types of sentences, and a significant interaction, such that the effects were greater with semantically regular sentences compared with semantically anomalous sentences. We conclude that sentence-level semantic information can constrain word identities under parallel word processing, albeit with less impact than that exerted by syntax.

International audience; Most recent research highlights how a specific form of causal understanding, namely technical reasoning, may support the increasing complexity of tools and techniques developed by humans over generations, i.e., the cumulative technological culture (CTC). Thus, investigating the neurocognitive foundations of technical reasoning is essential to comprehend the emergence of CTC in our lineage. Whereas functional neuroimaging evidence started to highlight the critical role of the area PF of the left inferior parietal cortex (IPC) in technical reasoning, no studies explored the links between the structural characteristics of such a brain region and technical reasoning skills. Therefore, in this study, we assessed participants’ technical-reasoning performance by using two ad-hoc psycho-technical tests; then, we extracted from participants’ 3 T T1-weighted magnetic-resonance brain images the cortical thickness (i.e., a volume-related measure which is associated with cognitive performance as reflecting the size, density, and arrangement of cells in a brain region) of all the IPC regions for both hemispheres. We found that the cortical thickness of the left area PF predicts participants’ technical-reasoning performance. Crucially, we reported no correlations between technical reasoning and the other IPC regions, possibly suggesting the specificity of the left area PF in generating technical knowledge. We discuss these findings from an evolutionary perspective, by speculating about how the evolution of parietal lobes may have supported the emergence of technical reasoning in our lineage.

International audience; Benzodiazepines have proven to be highly effective for treating insomnia and anxiety. Although considered safe when taken for a short period of time, a major risk–benefit dilemma arises in the context of long-term use, relating to addiction, withdrawal symptoms, and potential side effects. For these reasons, benzodiazepines are not recommended for treating chronic sleep disorders, anxiety disorders, nor for people over the age of 65, and withdrawal among long-term users is a public health issue. Indeed, only 5% of patients manage to discontinue using these drugs on their own. Even with the help of a general practitioner, this rate does not exceed 25 to 30% of patients, of which approximately 7% manage to remain drug-free in the long term. Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBT) offer a crucial solution to this problem, having been shown to increase abstinence success to 70–80%. This article examines traditional and novel CBT techniques in this regard, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which address both the underlying condition (insomnia/anxiety) and the substance-related disorder. The theoretical framework and evidence supporting the use of these approaches are reviewed. Finally, current research gaps are discussed, and key research perspectives are proposed.

International audience

International audience; Cette étude a pour but d’étudier la supervision de système lors de l’utilisation de deux types de systèmesautomatisés : statique ou adaptatif. Notre objectif est d’étudier ces derniers dans des situations où la fiabilitén’est pas parfaite. Nous avons confronté 80 participants à trois tâches du Multi Attribute Task Battery (MATB).Nous avons manipulé quatre niveaux de fiabilité différentes et deux types de systèmes automatisés. Un systèmeadaptatif avec des sessions de contrôle manuel planifiées, ainsi qu’un système statique, où le contrôle nechangeait jamais. Nos résultats ont montré que les participants ne mettaient pas en place les mêmes stratégiesd’allocations visuelles d’attention selon les niveaux de fiabilité du système. Sous un système statique, lesparticipants passaient plus de temps sur la tâche avec le niveau 0% de fiabilité, que dans le niveau 100% où lasurveillance était réduite. Sous un système adaptatif, le comportement visuel était le même mais moins prononcé.Nos données ont également montré des résultats intéressants dans les sessions manuelles où les différentsniveaux de fiabilité n’entrainent pas le même comportement visuel des participants lorsqu’ils retournent ensupervision de système. Le niveau de fiabilité 56.25% a entrainé plus d’implication visuelle des participantsdurant les sessions automatisées, suivant une session de contrôle manuelle.

Digital plays a key role in the transformation of medicine. Beyond the simple computerisation of healthcare systems, many non-drug treatments are now possible thanks to digital technology. Thus, interactive stimulation exercises can be offered to people suffering from cognitive disorders, such as developmental disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, stroke or traumas. The efficiency of these new treatments, which are still primarily offered face-to-face by therapists, can be greatly improved if patients can pursue them at home. However, patients are left to their own devices which can be problematic. We introduce THERADIA, a 5-year project that aims to develop an empathic virtual agent that accompanies patients while receiving digital therapies at home, and that provides feedback to therapists and caregivers. We detail the architecture of our agent as well as the framework of our Wizard-of-Oz protocol, designed to collect a large corpus of interactions between people and our virtual assistant in order to train our models and improve our dialogues.

International audience; Neurodevelopmental disorders are frequent in the general population and are often lifelong conditions despite sometimes being masked by conscious or unconscious compensation and avoidance mechanisms. These conditions are often unknown or underestimated in adults, even when diagnosed in childhood. Neurodevelopmental disorders share similarities with and frequently interact in a complex way with neurodegenerative disorders. Considering these aspects during memory clinic assessments can provide a new perspective on lifelong neurocognitive trajectories. Assessing both neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative dimensions is challenging but should improve diagnostic accuracy. It is therefore necessary to understand the lifelong specific neurocognitive trajectory of each patient in order to develop personalized and focused cognitive medicine and care.

This study aims at increasing knowledge of the best way to design trucks’ gauges on digital instrument clusters. Trucks are equipped with many gauges that the driver has to monitor while driving. Digital instrument clusters offer new design possibilities and the human factors literature presents only limited answers on safe and efficient gauge designs. Eighteen truck drivers were presented with eight gauges with different shapes, orientation and indicators to perform three reading tasks (quantitative, qualitative and check reading). Results showed that gauge design impacted task completion times, eyes on-gauge duration and satisfaction. Horizontal gauges and pointer indicators were more efficient and less demanding visually. On the subjective side, circular and horizontal gauges were preferred by drivers. Specific gauge designs implied a gain in visual demand up to 250 ms. For the design of gauges on digital instrument cluster, information processing can be facilitated thanks to basic design changes.

The ever-increasing degree of automation in vehicles, with drivers delegating part of the manual driving task to automation, sets new research questions in terms of human–machine cooperation. Manua...

International audience; Chronic pain patients often complain of their "poor memory" and numerous studies objectively confirmed such difficulties in reporting working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) dysfunctions. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature on memory impairment in chronic pain (CP) patients. Twenty-four observational studies evaluating WM or/and LTM in a chronic pain group and a control group were included in this review. Results showed that studies consistently reported a moderate decline, in both WM and LTM performances in CP patients. Even if CP patients complained about forgetfulness, objective measurements did not permit to conclude to a long-term storage impairment. CP patients exhibited more specifically encoding or retrieving difficulties compared to controls. Results showed that chronic pain selectively impacted the most attention-demanding memory processes, such as working memory and recollection in long-term memory. Results also demonstrated that CP patients exhibited a memory bias directed towards painful events compared to control subjects. Several authors have suggested that CP could be a maladaptive consequence of memory mechanisms. The long-lasting presence of pain continuously reinforces aversive emotional associations with incidental events. The inability to extinguish this painful memory trace could explain the chronic persistence of pain even when the original injury has disappeared. A major concern is the need to extricate pain-related cognitive effects from those resulting from all the co-morbidities associated with CP which both have a deleterious effect on cognitive function.

International audience; We compared automation monitoring evolution of static or adaptive automation for four different reliability levels over 90 minutes. Previous studies have demonstrated degraded human performance when monitoring automation and that it is possible to mitigate this monitoring performance drop by using adaptive automation. We used the Open Multi-Attribute Task Battery to manipulate two type of automation (static automation without manual take-over sessions and adaptive automation with planned take-over sessions) and four levels of reliability. Participants performed three simultaneous tasks, one of which was automated. Our results suggest that a perfectly reliable or a totally unreliable automation led to different strategies by the participants in terms of visual allocation policy. Under static automation, the time spent looking at the automated task in the 0% reliability level increased over the duration of the experiment; however, the opposite was observed for the 100% reliability level. Although similar, the magnitude of this pattern of results was largely diminished under adaptive automation. For static automation, the reported data also showed a direct link between trust in automation and visual scanning strategies. The more the trust increased, the less the automated task was looked at.

In the last few years, emotions and cognition, and in particular the link between the two, have fascinated scientists around the world, giving rise to a large body of research in psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience. One of the cognitive functions that has drawn the attention of researchers, in line with its emotional modulation, is episodic memory. Thus, research work carried out in humans has largely agreed on one point: emotions improve episodic memory, a phenomenon which is called Emotional Enhancement of Memory (EEM). While the EEM has been extensively investigated in the adult population, the nature of the interaction between memory and emotions remains largely unexplored during development. However, childhood is a critical period during which major changes emerge in brain function, underpinning the cognitive and emotional development of children until adulthood. This thesis work therefore focused, primarily, on the study of the EEM in typically developing (TD) children in order to highlight potential developmental modulations compared to the adult population. Secondly, in order to broaden our knowledge of the EEM during development, this thesis work adopted a neuropsychological approach with the study of this phenomenon in children and adolescents with a neurodevelopmental disorder called Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS). Thus, several experimental studies were conducted in order to evaluate the EEM in TD children and individuals with WBS, both with behavioral assessments, including encoding and retrieval tasks of emotional (negative and positive) and neutral stimuli, as well as with neurophysiological measures using electroencephalography (EEG). In particular, the behavioral evaluations examined episodic memory as a whole, taking into account its two main components, i.e. item memory and associative memory. The results obtained in this research work highlighted, for the first time, the emergence of an EEM in both item and associative memory in TD children aged 8 to 11 years, which is similar to that of young adults. First clues of the modulation of neural responses during the encoding of emotional stimuli that can predict behavioral memory performance were also shown in TD children. In addition, this research work provided the first evidence of the emergence of an EEM in children and adolescents with WBS aged 8 to 18 years, which appeared similarly to a group of young TD children. Overall, this thesis work helped to demonstrate that EEM is a robust phenomenon, established early in development and which does not seem to be affected by the immaturity of certain memory processes in TD children, nor by the alteration of these processes in the case of WBS., Ces dernières années, les émotions et la cognition, et en particulier le lien entre ces deux domaines, ont fasciné les scientifiques du monde entier, donnant naissance à de nombreux travaux de recherche en psychologie, sciences cognitives et neurosciences. L’une des fonctions cognitives qui a éminemment attirée l’attention des chercheurs, en lien avec la modulation émotionnelle à laquelle elle est assujettie, est la mémoire épisodique. Aussi, les travaux de recherche réalisés chez l’Homme se sont largement accordés sur un point : les émotions participent à l’amélioration de la mémoire épisodique, un phénomène qui, dans la littérature, porte le nom de Emotional Enhancement of Memory (EEM). Si ce phénomène a amplement été étudié dans la population adulte, la nature de l’interaction entre mémoire et émotions reste largement inexplorée au cours du développement ontogénétique. Or, l’enfance est une période charnière durant laquelle des modifications majeures émergent au niveau du fonctionnement cérébral, sous-tendant le développement cognitif et émotionnel de l’enfant jusqu’à l’âge adulte. Ce travail de thèse s’est donc centré, dans un premier temps, sur l’étude de l’EEM chez l’enfant au développement typique (DT) afin de mettre en exergue de potentielles modulations développementales comparativement à la population adulte. Dans un deuxième temps, afin d’élargir nos connaissances sur l’EEM au cours du développement, ce travail de thèse a adopté une approche neuropsychologique avec l’étude de ce phénomène auprès d’enfants et d’adolescents porteurs d’un trouble neuro-développemental appelé syndrome de Williams-Beuren (SWB). Ainsi, plusieurs études expérimentales ont été conduites afin d’évaluer l’EEM chez l’enfant au DT et dans le SWB, à la fois avec des évaluations comportementales, comprenant des tâches d’encodage et de récupération en mémoire de stimuli émotionnels (négatifs et positifs) et neutres, ainsi qu’avec des mesures neurophysiologiques grâce à l’électro-encéphalographie (EEG). En particulier, les évaluations comportementales se sont intéressées à l’analyse de la mémoire épisodique dans sa globalité, c’est-à-dire en tenant compte de ses deux composants principaux qui sont la mémoire de l’item et la mémoire associative. Les résultats obtenus dans ce travail de recherche ont permis, pour la première fois, de mettre en évidence l’émergence d’un EEM à la fois en mémoire de l’item et en mémoire associative chez les enfants au DT âgés de 8 à 11 ans, et ceci de façon similaire à des jeunes adultes. Des premiers indices de la modulation des réponses neuronales lors de l’encodage de stimuli émotionnels pouvant prédire les performances comportementales en mémoire, ont également été apportés chez les enfants au DT. Par ailleurs, ce travail de recherche a contribué à fournir des premières preuves de l’émergence d’un EEM chez les enfants et adolescents porteurs du SWB âgés de 8 à 18 ans, qui apparaissait de façon similaire à un groupe de jeunes enfants au DT. Dans l’ensemble, ce travail de thèse a permis de démontrer que l’EEM est un phénomène robuste, qui se mettrait en place précocement au cours du développement et qui ne semblerait pas être affecté par l’immaturité de certains processus mnésiques observée chez les enfants au DT, ni par l’altération de ces processus dans le cas du SWB.

The issue of climate change has become central in recent years as alarming data accumulate. It nevertheless has its critics, consisting of people denying climate change or minimizing the responsibility of human beings in the process. This skepticism partly derives from the complexity of the topic, encouraging people to rely on cognitive shortcuts to grasp the phenomenon. We question the role of analytic cognitive style, general and climate change-related knowledge, overconfidence, and political partisanship (plus additional expected confounding variables) in this process through a package of three studies (total N = 1031). In a first study, we showed that an intuitive mindset predicted greater skepticism relative to an analytical mindset while controlling for cognitive ability and the degree to which individuals value science, suggesting that reasoning cognitive style and trust are key parameters of climate change skepticism. A second study highlighted that climate science knowledge stands as strong and independent predictors of skepticism relative to analytic cognitive style. A final study revealed that analytic cognitive style and climate change knowledge generated less influence on climate change skepticism among conservatives than among liberals and moderates, suggesting that reliance on deliberative thinking and knowledgeability on climate science are not sufficient to mitigate climate change skepticism among conservatives. We discuss the critical interplay between cognitive processes and political partisanship in this ongoing debate.

International audience; Previous research has suggested that information and action automation stages do not imply the same consequences for human performance in the supervision of automated systems. Still, only a few studies have simultaneously investigated these stages. When information and action automation are reliable, both can support performance. However, with unreliable aids, the literature has suggested that action automation tends to be more detrimental than information automation. This study aimed to assess the contributions of imperfect information and action automation on attentional allocation and to investigate a potential monitoring inefficiency in a multitasking environment. Participants (n = 96) completed three Multi-Attribute Task Battery (MATB) tasks. A monitoring task was automated with two types of automation (action or information) of four reliabilities each (0%; 56.25%; 87.5%; 100%). Ocular behaviors and performance were assessed. Results show that reliability of information automation influenced visual resource allocation. When information automation was the most reliable, participants spent the least amount of time sampling the monitoring task. Finally, the reliability of action automation triggered no effect on performance or cumulative dwell times. Our results suggest that in complex multitasking situations where information and action automation occurred simultaneously, participants allocated fewer visual resources to automated task with increased information automation reliability. Similarly, their performance was better only with increased information automation.

When human being commits socially maladaptive behavior, they quickly seek to justify it to others and to themselves. This justification provides a new perspective on events and makes them feel less guilty. The justifications given are often erroneous and do not reflect a socially acceptable way of thinking. This type of justification is representative of distorted reality, and is commonly referred as cognitive distortions. The aim of this work is to understand these cognitive distortions and how they can explain maladaptive behavior. Sexual aggression is obviously a behavior that cannot be rationally justified, which is why six researches on cognitive distortions focused on this type of aggression. How is it possible to justify such behavior? The main explicative factors studied were personality traits, empathy and aggression. As a first step, our data suggest that a baseline exists to interpret cognitive distortions. This baseline is composed of three elements that are systematically found in all cognitive distortions: a high degree of sadism combined with strong disagreeableness and a high degree of psychopathy. Together, the appearance of cognitive distortions is more probable. This same baseline also leads to a lack of cognitive empathy which, in a context of sexual assault, can be interpreted as disregard for the victim. During the act, different types of aggression can be involved, ranging from passivity to proactive aggression. Nevertheless, these studies describe that all types of aggression are predicted by at least one cognitive distortion, which confirms the importance of investigating these erroneous justifications. In the literature, it has been shown that the same cognitive distortions are found in different sexual offenders. These justifications would indeed be representative of the same vision of the world and of the victim, shared by several individuals. These visions of the world that lead to malevolent thoughts are called implicit theories. Different implicit theories have been identified to describe the thoughts of sexual abusers about adults and children. The participation of sexual offenders in the present research makes possible to investigate these implicit theories and cognitive distortions from a cognitive perspective. Thus, recorded interviews, questionnaires and cognitive tests have been used. Based on recorded interviews, we identified 9 implicit theories that could be observed in sexual abusers, including two new ones not previously described in the literature. The first one was called "love": the person describes himself as being in love with the victim, which explains his behavior. The second is called "the bubble": the person attributes his aggression to the fact that he was in another world at the time of the acts and he was more specifically in his own bubble, disconnected from reality. The present studies also provide evidence that participants who are sexual abusers report more cognitive distortions, more dark personality traits and less cognitive empathy compared to control participants. Their recognition of other people's prosodic emotions also appears to be weaker. Their poorer scores on fear recognition could be an explanation for proactive aggression. This research as a whole confirms the recent interest for cognitive distortions in the context of sexual aggression, and provides promising results for understanding the process of acting out.; Lorsqu’une personne commet un comportement socialement inadapté, elle cherche peu de temps après à se justifier auprès des autres et à elle-même. Cette justification permettrait de voir les événements sous un autre angle et de se sentir moins coupable. Les justifications données sont souvent biaisées et elles ne rendent pas compte d’un raisonnement de pensée acceptable par la société. Ce type de justification est représentatif de distorsions de la réalité, et elles sont couramment appelées distorsions cognitives. L’objectif de ce travail a été de comprendre les distorsions cognitives et la manière dont elles peuvent expliquer un comportement inadapté. L’agression sexuelle est évidemment un comportement qui ne peut être justifié de façon rationnelle, c’est pourquoi les six études présentées ici sur les distorsions cognitives se sont focalisées sur la compréhension de ce type de comportement. La question générale derrière ces recherches est : comment est-il possible de justifier un tel passage à l’acte ? Pour y répondre, les principaux facteurs explicatifs étudiés ont été les traits de personnalité, l’empathie et l’agressivité. Dans un premier temps, nos données suggèrent qu’une ligne de base existe pour interpréter les distorsions cognitives. Cette ligne de base est constituée de trois éléments qui se retrouvent systématiquement dans toutes distorsions cognitives : un degré de sadisme élevé couplé avec une désagréabilité forte et un degré de psychopathie important. Considérés ensemble, ils rendent alors plus plausibles l’apparition des distorsions cognitives. Cette même ligne de base engendre également un manque d’empathie cognitive, ce qui dans un contexte d‘agression sexuelle peut être interprété par une indifférence vis-à-vis de la victime. Lors du passage à l’acte, différents types d’agressivité peuvent être mis en œuvre, allant d’une passivité à une agressivité proactive. Néanmoins, ces études décrivent que tout type d’agressivité est toujours prédit par au moins une distorsion cognitive, ce qui atteste de l’importance d’investiguer ces justifications biaisées. Dans la littérature, il a été mis en évidence que de mêmes distorsions cognitives se retrouvaient chez différents auteurs d’agression sexuelle. Ces justifications seraient en effet représentatives d’une vision du monde commune, partagée par plusieurs individus. Ces visions du monde qui amènent à avoir des pensées inadaptées sont appelées théories implicites et ont été décrites afin de rendre compte des modes de pensées des agresseurs sexuels d’adultes et d’enfants. La participation d’auteurs d’infraction à caractère sexuel (AICS) à la présente recherche a permis d’investiguer ces théories implicites et distorsions cognitives sous un angle cognitif. Ainsi, des entretiens enregistrés, des questionnaires et des tests cognitifs ont été mis en place. À partir des entretiens, nous avons mis en évidence 9 théories implicites qui pouvaient se retrouver chez les AICS, dont deux nouvelles non décrites jusqu’à présent dans la littérature. La première a été nommée « l’amour » dans laquelle la personne se décrit comme amoureuse de la victime, ce qui explique son passage à l’acte. La seconde est appelée « la bulle » puisque certains participants attribuent leur agression au fait qu’ils étaient dans un autre monde au moment des actes et qu’ils étaient plus spécifiquement dans leur propre bulle, déconnectés de la réalité. Les présentes études permettent également d’attester que les participants AICS témoignent de plus de distorsions cognitives, de plus de traits sombres de personnalité et d’une empathie cognitive réduite comparées à des participants contrôles. Leur reconnaissance des émotions auditives d’autrui semblent également plus faible, d’autant que leurs mauvais résultats pour la reconnaissance de la peur seraient une explication à une agressivité proactive.

International audience; L’approche incarnée et située prédit des interactions directes entre les traitements sensorimoteurs et cognitifs. Cet article présente les arguments en faveur de telles interactions en se concentrant sur le fonctionnement sensoriel et mnésique chez le jeune adulte, ainsi que sur la question des mécanismes qui sous-tendent ces interactions. Ces mécanismes incarnés et situés s’accompagnent non seulement d’interrogations épistémologiques fondamentales sur la notion de représentation et de modularité des fonctions cognitives, mais aussi d’enjeux d’ordre appliqué, en particulier lorsque l’approche incarnée et située est appréhendée selon un critère de fécondité épistémique. Cette fécondité est illustrée avec l’étude du vieillissement cognitif, car le vieillissement est marqué par des changements concomitants dans le traitement sensorimoteur et mnésique.

International audience; The Road Freight Transport (RFT) sector is continuously evolving, being confronted with intense competition and growing pressure from customers and suppliers, tight delivery times, and many regulations. All these factors lead the RFT sector to face multiple economic, environmental, and safety challenges. In these companies, the planner has a central position. The tasks of planner include supervising the transport round, keeping contact with the drivers during delivery, providing new instructions when needed, ensuring order follow-up with customers, etc. Such tasks require a high cognitive load which implies difficulties for planners in assessing the consequences of their decisions in terms of economic, environmental, and safety dimensions. In this study, principles of prospective ergonomics have been tested to support the transition from a human-based decision making to a computer-supported decision-making to anticipate the future computer-supported decision-making. We focused on the effect of system transparency and reliability. We confronted six planners with planning problems. We modified information available on planning to provide high and low levels of transparency. Starting from real issues, we also generated reliable and unreliable solutions (for these latter by adding invalid data). For each problem, planners were asked to assess the quality of the proposed solutions and indicators. The results showed than planners give a higher score to reliable scenarios displaying reliable information than to a less reliable scenario in which information is modified. This assessment of scenario is more adequate and easier with high transparency than with low transparency of information.

International audience

International audience; De nombreux modèles théoriques s’accordent sur un rôle central de l’attention en mémoire de travail, qui interviendrait à la fois lors des activités de traitement et de maintien de l’information. En particulier, le maintien en mémoire de travail pourrait reposer sur le mécanisme de rafraîchissement attentionnel. L’objectif du présent article est d’examiner les apports des approches neuroscientifiques pour clarifier l’existence et le fonctionnement d’un tel mécanisme. Les études en imagerie par résonance magnétique fonctionnelle ont permis de montrer l’activation de régions cérébrales spécifiques lors du rafraîchissement. Elles confortent l’hypothèse d’un mécanisme impliqué dans le maintien d’informations de différentes natures, qui permettrait la réactivation des propriétés sensorielles des traces mnésiques. Les études électrophysiologiques mettent en évidence, quant à elles, une relation étroite entre maintien en mémoire de travail et attention et contribuent à décrire le décours temporel du rafraîchissement. Ces études sont en accord avec un mécanisme de maintien présentant les caractéristiques fonctionnelles attribuées au mécanisme de rafraîchissement attentionnel : un mécanisme permettant de maintenir des informations indépendamment de leur nature verbale ou visuelle ou de la modalité sensorielle de présentation et reposant sur l’attention.

Active visual scanning of the scene is a key task-element in all forms of human locomotion. In the field of driving, steering (lateral control) and speed adjustments (longitudinal control) models are largely based on drivers' visual inputs. Despite knowledge gained on gaze behaviour behind the wheel, our understanding of the sequential aspects of the gaze strategies that actively sample that input remains restricted. Here, we apply scan path analysis to investigate sequences of visual scanning in manual and highly automated simulated driving. Five stereotypical visual sequences were identified under manual driving: forward polling (i.e. far road explorations), guidance, backwards polling (i.e. near road explorations), scenery and speed monitoring scan paths. Previously undocumented backwards polling scan paths were the most frequent. Under highly automated driving backwards polling scan paths relative frequency decreased, guidance scan paths relative frequency increased, and automation supervision specific scan paths appeared. The results shed new light on the gaze patterns engaged while driving. Methodological and empirical questions for future studies are discussed.

Previous literature reported that Participatory Design (PD) results in satisfying products and presents other subjective benefits. PD implies an active involvement of users during all steps of the design process, including during concepts specification (contrary to user-centered design, UCD). This study compared the usability and acceptance of truck dashboards resulting either from a PD or from a UCD design processes. Moreover, design concepts from two PD approaches were compared: a collective versus an individual design session. Results showed that concepts resulting from user-centered design and individual design sessions were perceived as more useable and accepted than the concept resulting from the participatory workshop. These findings question PD benefits and encourage to further explore the different PD approaches in the industrial development of truck dashboards.