Aushana, Y, Souffi, S., Edeline, J.M., Lorenzi, C., & Huetz, C. (2018). Robust neuronal discrimination in primary auditory cortex despite degradations of spectro-temporal acoustic details: comparison between guinea pigs with normal hearing and mild age-related hearing loss. Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology. doi: 10.1007/s10162-017-0649-1

Résumé :This study investigated to which extent the primary auditory cortex of young normal-hearing and mild hearing-impaired aged animals is able to maintain invariant representation of critical temporal-modulation features when sounds are submitted to degradations of fine spectro-temporal acoustic details. This was achieved by recording ensemble of cortical responses to conspecific vocalizations in guinea pigs with either normal hearing or mild age-related sensorineural hearing loss. The vocalizations were degraded using a tone vocoder. The neuronal responses and their discrimination capacities (estimated by mutual information) were analyzed at single recording and population levels. For normal-hearing animals, the neuronal responses decreased as a function of the number of the vocoder frequency bands, so did their discriminative capacities at the single recording level. However, small neuronal populations were found to be robust to the degradations induced by the vocoder. Similar robustness was obtained when broadband noise was added to exacerbate further the spectro-temporal distortions produced by the vocoder. A comparable pattern of robustness to degradations in fine spectro-temporal details was found for hearing-impaired animals. However, the latter showed an overall decrease in neuronal discrimination capacities between vocalizations in noisy conditions. Consistent with previous studies, these results demonstrate that the primary auditory cortex maintains robust neural representation of temporal envelope features for communication sounds under a large range of spectro-temporal degradations.

Ewert, S., Paraouty, N., & Lorenzi, C. (2018). A two-path model of auditory modulation detection using temporal fine structure and envelope cues. European Journal of Neuroscience. doi: 10.1111/ejn.13846.

Résumé :
A model using temporal-envelope cues was previously developed to explain perceptual interference effects between amplitude modulation and frequency modulation (FM). As that model could not accurately predict FM sensitivity and the interference effects, temporal fine structure (TFS) cues were added to the model. Thus, following the initial stage of the model consisting of a linear filter bank simulating cochlear filtering, processing was split into an 'envelope path' based on envelope power cues and a 'TFS path' based on a measure of the distribution of time intervals between successive zero-crossings. This yielded independent detectability indices for envelope and TFS cues, which were optimally combined to produce a single decision statistic. Independent internal noises in the envelope and TFS paths were adjusted to match the data. Simulations indicate that TFS cues are required to account for FM data for young normal-hearing listeners and that TFS processing is impaired for both older normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. The role of TFS was further assessed by relating the monaural FM sensitivity to measures of interaural phase difference, commonly assumed to rely on binaural TFS sensitivity. The model demonstrates that binaural TFS sensitivity is considerably lower than monaural TFS sensitivity. Similar to FM thresholds, interaural phase difference sensitivity declined with age and hearing loss, although higher degradations were observed in binaural temporal processing compared to monaural processing. Overall, this model provides a novel tool to explore the mechanisms involved in FM processing in the normal auditory system and the degradations in FM sensitivity with ageing and hearing loss.

Kim S., Paulus M, Sodian B, Itakura S, Ueno M, Senju A, Proust J, (2018). Selective learning and teaching among Japanese and German children. Dev Psychol; 54(3):536-542

Résumé :
Despite an increasing number of studies demonstrating that young children selectively learn from others, and a few studies of children's selective teaching, the evidence almost exclusively comes from Western cultures, and cross-cultural comparison in this line of work is very rare. In the present research, we investigated Japanese and German children's selective learning and teaching abilities. We found clear cultural differences. Japanese children were better at selectively teaching an ignorant person over a knowledgeable person than at selectively learning from knowledgeable others. By contrast, German children were better at choosing to learn from a knowledgeable rather than from an ignorant person than at selectively teaching ignorant others. The present findings suggest that the development of human learning and teaching, especially the tendency to take into account others' knowledge status, is strongly affected by cultural background. (PsycINFO Database Record.

Kim, S., Shahaeian, A., & Proust, J. (2018), Developmental diversity in mindreading and metacognition, in Proust, J. & Fortier, M. (eds.), Metacognitive Diversity, OUP, 97-133.

Proust, J. & Fortier, M. (Eds.) (2018). Metacognitive diversity: An interdisciplinary approach. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Résumé :
Metacognition refers to our awareness of our own mental processes, such as perceiving, remembering, learning, and problem solving. It is a fascinating area of research for psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, sociologists and philosophers. This book explores the variability of metacognitive skills across cultures, since a person's decision to allocate effort, motivation to learn, sense of being right or wrong in perceptions, memories, and other cognitive tasks depends on specific transmitted goals, norms, and values. Across nineteen chapters, a group of leading authors analyze the variable and universal features associated with these dimensions, drawing on cutting-edge evidence. Additionally, new domains of metacognitive variability are considered in this volume, including those generated by metacognition-oriented embodied practices (present in rituals and religious worship), and culture-specific lay theories about subjective uncertainty and knowledge regarding natural or supernatural entities. It also documents universal metacognitive features, such as children's earlier sensitivity to their own ignorance than to that of others, people's intuitive understanding of what counts as knowledge, and speakers' sensitivity to informational sources (independently of the way the information is linguistically expressed). The book is important reading for students and scholars in cognitive and cultural psychology, anthopology, developmental and social psychology, linguistics, and philosophy.

Proust, J. & Fortier, M. (2018). Metacognitive diversity across cultures: An introduction. In J. Proust & M. Fortier (Eds.), Metacognitive diversity: An interdisciplinary approach. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Recanati F. (2018), Fictional, Metafictional, Parafictional , Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

Résumé :
Fictional uses of fictional proper names are the uses one finds in the fiction in which the names in question are introduced. Such uses are not genuinely referential: they rest on pretence. Metafictional uses of proper names (‘Sherlock Holmes was created by Doyle in 1887’) are genuinely referential: they refer to a cultural artefact. In the paper I discuss a third type of use of fictional names: parafictional uses, illustrated by ‘In the story, Holmes is a clever detective’. I try to steer a middle course between two approaches, one that assimilates them to metafictional uses, and another one that assimilates them to fictional uses.

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