Catherine Auxiette

Adult Attitudes toward Behaviors of a Six-Year-Old Boy with Autism.

Parents report that their children with autism are often judged as undisciplined and rude (e.g., Peeters, Autism: From theoretical understanding to educational intervention, 1997). The phenomenon of a negative view of individuals with autism was studied here. Four behaviors (two problematic and two non-problematic) produced by a six-year-old child with autism were assessed on social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions by 88 adults in an “informed” or “uninformed” condition. The child was perceived more positively when identified as having autism. However, this effect was dependent on the type of behavior and the evaluative dimension used. The results indicate that the mere fact of being informed of a child’s disability triggers the use of a different standard of comparison than that employed to evaluate typical children (Mussweiler and Strack, J Pers Soc Psychol 78:1038–1052, 2000).

'Do Well B.': Design Of WELL Being monitoring systems. A study protocol for the application in autism.

Introduction Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties in communication and social interaction resulting from atypical perceptual and cognitive information processing, leading to an accumulation of anxiety. Extreme overloading experienced internally may not be externally visible. Identifying stressful situations at an early stage may avoid socially problematic behaviour from occurring, such as self-injurious behaviour. Activation of the autonomous nervous system (ANS) is involved in the response to anxiety, which can be measured through heart rate variability and skin conductance with the use of portable devices, non-intrusively and pain-free. Thus, developing innovative analysis of signal perception and reaction is necessary, mainly for non-communicative individuals with autism. Methods and analysis The protocol will take place in real life (home and social environments). We aim to associate modifications of the ANS with external events that will be recorded in a synchronous manner through a specific design (spy glasses with video/audio recording). Four phases will be carried out on ASD participants and aged-matched controls: (1) 24-hour baseline pre-experiment (physical activity, sleep), (2) 2 h in a real life situation, (3) 30 min in a quiet environment, interrupted by a few seconds of stressful sound, (4) an interview to record feelings about events triggering anxiety. ASD and control participants will be together for phases 2 and 3, revealing different physiological responses to the same situations, and thus identifying potentially problematic events. The novelty will be to apply time-series analyses (which led to several Nobel Prizes in quantitative finance) on ANS series (heart rate, heart rate variability, skin conductance) and wrist motion. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval has been obtained from Ethics Committee of Clermont-Ferrand (South-East I), France (2014-A00611–46). Trial findings will be disseminated via open-access peer-reviewed publications, conferences, clinical networks, public lectures and our websites. Trial registration number ClinicalTrials identifier NCT02275455.

Rapid Presentation of Emotional Expressions Reveals New Emotional Impairments in Tourette’s Syndrome

Objective: Based on a variety of empirical evidence obtained within the theoretical framework of embodiment theory, we considered it likely that motor disorders in Tourette’s syndrome (TS) would have emotional consequences for TS patients. However, previous research using emotional facial categorization tasks suggests that these consequences are limited to TS patients with obsessive-compulsive behaviors (OCB). Method: These studies used long stimulus presentations which allowed the participants to categorize the different emotional facial expressions (EFEs) on the basis of a perceptual analysis that might potentially hide a lack of emotional feeling for certain emotions. In order to reduce this perceptual bias, we used a rapid visual presentation procedure. Results: Using this new experimental method, we revealed different and surprising impairments on several EFEs in TS patients compared to matched healthy control participants. Moreover, a spatial frequency analysis of the visual signal processed by the patients suggests that these impairments may be located at a cortical level. Conclusion: The current study indicates that the rapid visual presentation paradigm makes it possible to identify various potential emotional disorders that were not revealed by the standard visual presentation procedures previously reported in the literature. Moreover, the spatial frequency analysis performed in our study suggests that emotional deficit in TS might lie at the level of temporal cortical areas dedicated to the processing of HSF visual information.

Contraintes perceptives et temporelles dans l’exploration du modèle de Ledoux

EnglishThe human perceptual system is operating an expedient processing within the early visual system. Low spatial frequency information is processed rapidly through magnocellular layers compared to high spatial frequency information, which are conveyed more slowly by the parvocellular layers. The purpose of the present paper is to assess whether low spatial frequency information elicit better emotional facial expression recognition in a classification task, relative to high spatial frequency and broad spatial frequency visual stimuli. At the behavioural level however, in support of the so-called coarse-to-fine bias (Parker, Lishman, & Hughes, 1997 ; Schyns & Oliva, 1994, 1997) obtained with non-emotional scenes, this perceptual bias may act in favour of high spatial frequency information, beyond 100 ms of visual presentation. Thus, these results point out some limits of recent studies from psychology and neuroimaging experiments supporting an automatic reflex instantiated by the Ledoux�s subcortical pathway beyond 100 ms. francaisLe systeme visuel primaire effectue une decomposition spectrale du signal retinien. L�information de Basse Frequence Spatiale (BFS) est traitee tres rapidement par les voies magnocellulaires, alors que l�information de Haute Frequence Spatiale (HFS) est traitee plus lentement par les voies parvocellulaires. L�objectif de l�etude rapportee ici est de determiner, dans la perspective du modele de Ledoux (1996), si l�information BFS permet de meilleures performances de categorisation d�expressions faciales emotionnelles (EFE), comparativement a l�information HFS et aux images integrales en condition de presentation rapide mais consciente (a 100 ms de presentation). Conformement aux donnees publiees sur le biais coarse-to-fine pour les scenes naturelles non emotionnelles (Parker, Lishman, & Hughes, 1997 ; Peyrin, Mermillod, Chokron, & Marendaz, 2006 ; Schyns & Oliva, 1994, 1997), nos resultats indiquent un avantage de traitement en faveur des HFS des 100 ms de presentation visuelle. Ce resultat limite les conditions d�application d�etudes recentes en psychologie et en neuro-imagerie qui tentent de mettre en evidence une action reflexe par la voie sous-corticale du modele de Ledoux (1996) pour des durees de presentation visuelle superieures a 100 ms.

Sedentary Behavior at Work and Cognitive Functioning: A Systematic Review.

Background: It is now well-established that sedentarity has a negative impact on the physiological functioning and health of humans, whereas very little is known about the psychological repercussions, especially in cognitive functioning. Yet, studying the cognitive effects of the sedentary lifestyle is particularly relevant in the short term for productivity and in the long term for cognitive health (accelerated aging). This systematic review therefore aims to make an inventory of the potential cognitive effects of sedentarity at the workplace. Methods: Pubmed, PsycINFO, Cochrane, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched for English-language peer-reviewed articles published between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2017 to identify studies including sedentary behavior and objective measures from cognitive domains (cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, working memory, etc.). To carry out this systematic review, the 3 keywords “Sedentary” and “Cognition” and “Work” (and their derivatives) had to appear in the title or in the summary of the paper. Results: Of the 13 papers that met the inclusion criteria, 9 were short-term interventions, 3 medium-term interventions, and 1 long-term intervention. Nine of them reported non-significant results. Two studies study reported deterioration in cognitive performance. Two reported an improvement in performance in cognitive tasks with one study with overweight adults and the only one study with a long-term intervention. However, these studies intend to reduce sedentary behavior, but do not allow answering the question of the potential cognitive effects of the sedentary lifestyle. Conclusion: These data suggest that sedentary behavior is not associated with changes in cognitive performance in interventions that intend to reduce sedentary behavior. Then, and given the trend toward increased time in sedentary behavior, long-term prospective studies of high methodological quality are recommended to clarify the relationships between sedentary behavior and the cognitive functioning. Our systematic review identifies also the need for retrospective, longitudinal, or epidemiologic studies. It also recognizes the need to standardize methodology for collecting, defining, and reporting sedentary behavior and the need to standardize the cognitive tests used. The relationship between sedentary behavior and cognitive functioning remaining uncertain, further studies are warranted for which 8 recommendations are proposed.