Tarryn Balsdon, Valentin Wyart, Pascal Mamassian (2024). Metacognitive evaluation of postdecisional perceptual representations. Journal of Vision, Vol.24, 2. doi:10.1167/jov.24.4.2

Résumé :

Perceptual confidence is thought to arise from metacognitive processes that evaluate the underlying perceptual decision evidence. We investigated whether metacognitive access to perceptual evidence is constrained by the hierarchical organization of visual cortex, where high-level representations tend to be more readily available for explicit scrutiny. We found that the ability of human observers to evaluate their confidence did depend on whether they performed a high-level or low-level task on the same stimuli, but was also affected by manipulations that occurred long after the perceptual decision. Confidence in low-level perceptual decisions degraded with more time between the decision and the response cue, especially when backward masking was present. Confidence in high-level tasks was immune to backward masking and benefitted from additional time. These results can be explained by a model assuming confidence heavily relies on postdecisional internal representations of visual stimuli that degrade over time, where high-level representations are more persistent.

Julie Bestel, Daniel Pressnitzer, Mathieu Robier, Frédéric Rembaud, Christian Renard, François Leclercq, Christophe Vincent (2024). Reference data for a quick speech-in-noise hearing test in the French language. Audiol Neurootol. doi: 10.1159/000537768. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38498993.

Résumé :
Introduction: Difficulties in understanding speech in noise is the most common complaint of people with hearing impairment. Thus, there is a need for tests of speech-in-noise ability in clinical settings, which have to be evaluated for each language. Here, a reference dataset is presented for a quick speech-in-noise test in the French language (Vocale Rapide dans le Bruit, VRB; Leclercq, Renard & Vincent, 2018).
Methods: A large cohort (N=641) was tested in a nationwide multicentric study. The cohort comprised normal-hearing individuals and individuals with a broad range of symmetrical hearing losses. Short everyday sentences embedded in babble noise were presented over a spatial array of loudspeakers. Speech level was kept constant while noise level was progressively increased over a range of signal-to-noise ratios. The signal-to-noise ratio for which 50% of keywords could be correctly reported (Speech Reception Threshold, SRT) was derived from psychometric functions. Other audiometric measures were collected for the cohort, such as audiograms and speech-in-quiet performance.
Results: The VRB test was both sensitive and reliable, as shown by the steep slope of the psychometric functions and by the high test-retest consistency across sentence lists. Correlation analyses showed that pure tone averages derived from the audiograms explained 74% of the SRT variance over the whole cohort, but only 29% for individuals with clinically normal audiograms. SRTs were then compared to recent guidelines from the French Society of Audiology (Joly et al., 2021). Among individuals who would not have qualified for hearing aid prescription based on their audiogram or speech intelligibility in quiet, 18.4% were now eligible as they displayed SRTs in noise impaired by 3 dB or more. For individuals with borderline audiograms, between 20 dB HL and 30 dB HL, the prevalence of impaired SRTs increased to 71.4%. Finally, even though five lists are recommended for clinical use, a minute-long screening using only one VRB list detected 98.6% of impaired SRTs.
Conclusion: The reference data suggest that VRB testing can be used to identify individuals with speech-in-noise impairment.

Manon Couvignou, Hugo Peyre, Franck Ramus, Régine Kolinsky (2024). Do early musical impairments predict later reading difficulties? A longitudinal study of pre-readers with and without familial risk for dyslexia. Dev Sci, e13519. doi:10.1111/desc.13519. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38679927.

Résumé :
The present longitudinal study investigated the hypothesis that early musical skills (as measured by melodic and rhythmic perception and memory) predict later literacy development via a mediating effect of phonology. We examined 130 French-speaking children, 31 of whom with a familial risk for developmental dyslexia (DD). Their abilities in the three domains were assessed longitudinally with a comprehensive battery of behavioral tests in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. Using a structural equation modeling approach, we examined potential longitudinal effects from music to literacy via phonology. We then investigated how familial risk for DD may influence these relationships by testing whether atypical music processing is a risk factor for DD. Results showed that children with a familial risk for DD consistently underperformed children without familial risk in music, phonology, and literacy. A small effect of musical ability on literacy via phonology was observed, but may have been induced by differences in stability across domains over time. Furthermore, early musical skills did not add significant predictive power to later literacy difficulties beyond phonological skills and family risk status. These findings are consistent with the idea that certain key auditory skills are shared between music and speech processing, and between DD and congenital amusia. However, they do not support the notion that music perception and memory skills can serve as a reliable early marker of DD, nor as a valuable target for reading remediation. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Music, phonology, and literacy skills of 130 children, 31 of whom with a familial risk for dyslexia, were examined longitudinally. Children with a familial risk for dyslexia consistently underperformed children without familial risk in musical, phonological, and literacy skills. Structural equation models showed a small effect of musical ability in kindergarten on literacy in second grade, via phonology in first grade. However, early musical skills did not add significant predictive power to later literacy difficulties beyond phonological skills and family risk status.

Johann Lussange, Stefano Vrizzi, Stefano Palminteri, Boris Gutkin (2024). Mesoscale effects of trader learning behaviors in financial markets: A multi-agent reinforcement learning study. PlosOne. 10.1371/journal.pone.0301141

Résumé :
Recent advances in the field of machine learning have yielded novel research perspectives in behavioural economics and financial markets microstructure studies. In this paper we study the impact of individual trader leaning characteristics on markets using a stock market simulator designed with a multi-agent architecture. Each agent, representing an autonomous investor, trades stocks through reinforcement learning, using a centralized double-auction limit order book. This approach allows us to study the impact of individual trader traits on the whole stock market at the mesoscale in a bottom-up approach. We chose to test three trader trait aspects: agent learning rate increases, herding behaviour and random trading. As hypothesized, we find that larger learning rates significantly increase the number of crashes. We also find that herding behaviour undermines market stability, while random trading tends to preserve it.

Franck Ramus (2024). La légende noire des surdoués, suite et fin. Enfance, 1, 11-20. doi:10.3917/enf2.241.0011

Résumé :
Depuis de longues années, l’idée selon laquelle les enfants et adultes à haut quotient intellectuel (HQI) seraient particulièrement à risque d’échec scolaire ou de troubles psychologiques tourne en boucle dans les médias, un phénomène que nous avons décrit et surnommé « La légende noire des surdoués » (Ramus & Gauvrit, 2017). Dans cet article, nous rappelons tout d’abord les connaissances scientifiques sur l’intelligence et ses corrélats, qui rendent cette idée fort peu plausible. Puis nous détaillons cinq études que nous avons menées pour tester cette hypothèse de la manière la plus directe possible, y compris en France. Les résultats de nos travaux sont sans ambiguïté : les enfants à haut QI ont de bien meilleurs résultats scolaires que les autres, et ils n’ont pas plus de symptômes psychologiques ; les adultes à haut QI n’ont pas plus de troubles mentaux que les autres, et parfois moins. Nous concluons que la légende noire des surdoués est scientifiquement indéfendable.

İzel D. Sarı, Samuel Recht, Claudia Lunghi (2024). Learning to discriminate the eye-of-origin during continuous flash suppression. European Journal of Neuroscience, doi:10.1111/ejn.16373. Résumé :
Helmholtz asked whether one could discriminate which eye is the origin of one's perception merely based on the retinal signals. Studies to date showed that participants' ability to tell the eye-of-origin most likely depends on contextual cues. Nevertheless, it has been shown that exogenous attention can enhance performance for monocularly presented stimuli. We questioned whether adults can be trained to discriminate the eye-of-origin of their perceptions and if this ability depends on the strength of the monocular channels. We used attentional feed-forward training to improve the subject's eye-of-origin discrimination performance with voluntary attention. During training, participants received a binocular cue to inform them of the eye-of-origin of an upcoming target. Using continuous flash suppression, we also measured the signal strength of the monocular targets to see any possible modulations related to the cues. We collected confidence ratings from the participants about their eye-of-origin judgements to study in further detail whether metacognition has access to this information. Our results show that, even though voluntary attention did not alter the strength of the monocular channels, eye-of-origin discrimination performance improved following the training. A similar pattern was observed for confidence. The results from the feedforward attentional training and the increase in subjective confidence point towards a high-level decisional mechanism being responsible for the eye-of-origin judgements. We propose that this high-level process is informed by subtle sensory cues such as the differences in luminance or contrast in the two monocular channels.

Philippe Schlenker, Ambre Salis, Maël Leroux, Camille Coye, Luigi Rizzi, Shane Steinert-Threlkeld, Emmanuel Chemla (2024). Minimal Compositionality versus Bird Implicatures: two theories of ABC-D sequences in Japanese tits. Biological Reviews.doi:10.1111/brv.13068

Résumé :
It was argued in a series of experimental studies that Japanese tits (Parus minor) have an ABC call that has an alert function, a D call that has a recruitment function, and an ABC-D call that is compositionally derived from ABC and D, and has a mobbing function. A key conclusion was that ABC-D differs from the combination of separate utterances of ABC and of D (e.g. as played by distinct but close loudspeakers). While the logic of the argument is arguably sound, no explicit rule has been proposed to derive the meaning of ABC-D from that of its parts. We compare two analyses. One posits a limited instance of semantic compositionality (‘Minimal Compositionality’); the other does without compositionality, but uses instead a more sophisticated pragmatics (‘Bird Implicatures’). Minimal Compositionality takes the composition of ABC and D to deviate only minimally from what would be found with two independent utterances: ABC means that ‘there is something that licenses an alert’, D means that ‘there is something that licenses recruitment’, and ABC-D means that ‘there is something that licenses both an alert and recruitment’. By contrast, ABC and D as independent utterances yield something weaker, namely: ‘there is something that licenses an alert, and there is something that licenses recruitment’, without any ‘binding’ across the two utterances. The second theory, Bird Implicatures, only requires that ABC-D should be more informative than ABC, and/or than D. It builds on the idea, proposed for several monkey species, that a less-informative call competes with a more informative one (the ‘Informativity Principle’): when produced alone, ABC and D trigger an inference that ABC-D is false. We explain how both Minimal Compositionality and Bird Implicatures could have evolved, and we compare the predictions of the two theories. Finally, we extend the discussion to some chimpanzee and meerkat sequences that might raise related theoretical problems.

Pablo Fernandez Velasco, Bastien Perroy, Umer Gurchani, Roberto Casati (2024). Social and temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 pandemic: An analysis of 3306 responses to a quantitative questionnaire. Br J Psychol. doi:10.1111/bjop.12704.

Résumé :
The societal hallmark of the Covid-19 pandemic was a set of mitigation measures such as lockdowns and curfews. The cognitive impact on the public of the resulting spatial, social and temporal constraints is still being investigated. While pandemic time has been extensively studied and mostly described as slowed down and elongated, opposite experimental patterns across national and social contexts leave open an important explanatory gap in order to understand which factor has been causally fundamental in determining the phenomenology of the crisis. In this paper, we use a quantitative questionnaire developed for measuring temporal and social disorientation on a sample of 3306 respondents during an acute phase of restrictions in France. We show that social disorientation greatly contributed to the temporal disruptions experienced during the pandemic. This result reinforces the importance for public authorities to address the compounding effect of feeling isolated during crises.

Frédérique de Vignemont (2024). La douleur : entre évaluation et action. Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 121, 85-101. doi:10.3917/rmm.241.0085

Résumé :
Lorsque l’on s’intéresse à la douleur d’un point de vue philosophique, on se retrouve confronté à un problème majeur, à savoir la diversité des sensations que l’on qualifie spontanément comme étant douloureuses. Elles vont de la douleur perçante d’un kyste dentaire à la douleur pulsatile d’un mal de tête, de la douleur brûlante d’un mal d’estomac à la douleur lancinante d’une foulure. Le défi est de trouver ce que ces sensations ont en commun. Pourquoi appeler douleur des expériences aussi différentes ? Il peut ainsi paraître presque impossible d’en trouver une caractérisation unifiée, à moins d’être à un tel niveau de généralité qu’elle s’appliquerait aussi à de toutes autres sensations. Même si l’on se focalise sur un type de douleur, comme celle de brûlure, il est difficile de la définir de telle manière qu’elle décrive aussi bien notre vécu subjectif lors d’une infection urinaire, de remontées acides dans l’estomac, d’une bouche en feu d’un plat trop épicé, ou lors d’une casserole d’eau bouillante renversée sur la main. L’enjeu est de déterminer le plus petit dénominateur commun, ce qui n’est guère chose facile. Pour certains, c’est même impossible. Il faudrait selon eux abandonner l’idée qu’il existe une notion unique de douleur et reconnaître que le terme englobe une famille de sensations et d’expériences distinctes [1][1]J. Corns, The complex reality of pain, Londres, Routledge, 2020..
Ces dernières années, pourtant, la philosophie de la douleur a connu un certain renouveau dans la tradition analytique. Elle s’inscrit en majorité dans un courant représentationaliste, selon lequel la douleur correspond à un certain type de représentation mentale. Un état est dit représentationnel s’il a un contenu intentionnel qui a des conditions de satisfaction. Un exemple classique est celui de l’expérience visuelle. Lorsque je vois le ciel bleu, mon expérience visuelle représente le ciel bleu, et son contenu est véridique si le ciel est de cette couleur. Elle vise à décrire de manière la plus juste possible le monde visible. Imaginons maintenant que je désire manger du chocolat. De nouveau, mon désir représente le fait de manger du chocolat, et son contenu peut être satisfait si j’en mange. Il me prescrit alors quoi faire, plutôt qu’il ne décrit la situation. Dans ce cadre théorique, la question qui se pose pour la douleur est de savoir si elle est plus proche d’une expérience sensorielle, décrivant une perturbation corporelle, ou du désir, prescrivant de régler le problème. Autrement dit, la douleur s’apparente-t elle à une forme d’évaluation interne, comme le proposent les théories dites évaluatives, ou à une forme d’incitation à agir, comme le défendent les théories dites impératives ?
Ou peut-être la douleur n’est-elle ni l’une ni l’autre. Une alternative pour en rendre compte peut alors être cherchée au sein de la philosophie des émotions. La douleur est certes une sensation corporelle, mais elle est dotée d’une dimension affective, et elle est donc susceptible de partager avec les émotions un certain nombre de propriétés. Les théories contemporaines sur les émotions se scindent entre celles qui soutiennent que le caractère affectif est déterminé par le contenu de nos expériences [2][2]Par exemple C. Tappolet, Emotions, values and agency, Oxford,… et celles qui proposent de l’expliquer par l’attitude que nous adoptons vis-à-vis de la situation. Afin de mieux comprendre cette dernière approche, prenons l’exemple d’une voiture qui vous fonce dessus. Si vous êtes un pilote de rallye, vous abordez la situation avec sang-froid, mais si vous êtes un novice, vous serez probablement terrifié [3][3]P. Goldie, The emotions, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.. Pour certains, ce qui diffère entre les deux conducteurs, ce n’est pas ce dont ils ont l’expérience (le danger de la voiture approchant), mais la manière dont ils font l’expérience de la situation, ce que l’on appelle le mode ou l’attitude expérientiel [4][4]J. Deonna et F. Teroni, The emotions : A philosophical…. On pourrait alors proposer de définir la douleur elle aussi par la manière dont nous vivons la perturbation corporelle. Dans cet article, après avoir rappelé quelques faits fondamentaux sur la douleur et les problèmes philosophiques qu’elle soulève, nous verrons tour à tour les théories impératives, puis évaluatives, pour enfin esquisser les grandes lignes d’une théorie attitudinale.

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