Patrick Chambres

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).

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Have “The Working Raw Material” for Time Perception

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have a deficit in time perception. Twelve ASD children of normal intelligence and twelve typically developing children (TD) - matched on sex, chronological age, and mental age – performed four temporal bisection tasks that were adapted to the population. Two short (0.5 to 1 s and 1.25 to 2.5 s) and two long duration ranges (3.12 to 6.25 s and 7.81 to 16.62 s) were thus examined. The findings suggested that the perception of time in bisection is not impaired in ASD.

Metacognition Triggered by a Social Aspect of Expertise

The main goal of this study was to show how the social dimension of academic expertise affects cognitive and metacognitive activities in the context of speaking English as a foreign language. Two studies are reported in which pairs of French students interacted in English. The first study showed that students randomly said to be experts in English performed better than students said to be nonexperts. The second study replicated this effect, but showed that it was slightly modulated by the students’ actual expertise in English. This research clearly supports the claim that in communicative interaction, what individuals are told about their own and their partner’s expertise along a comparative dimension (here, English proficiency) is a determinant of the quantity and quality of their performance. A fictitious expert position, for example, has the power to promote metacognitive activity. These studies suggest that academic performance should be investigated not only from a cognitive and didactic standpoint, but also in terms of the social aspects of academic expertise.

'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.

The Need for Objective Measures of Stress in Autism

Despite the numerous definition of stress, the meaning of stress could refer to the adaptive behavioral or mental responses willing to address the common life consequences of stressors, such as increased attention to perform a mentally demanding task. The stressor can be real or perceived, pleasant, or unpleasant (Woda et al., 2016). Permanent adaptation to normal daily stressors is needed, via the physiological stress system. The physiological stress response triggers metabolic adaptations to the acute stressors (via activation of the autonomic nervous systemmostly resulting in release of epinephrine by the adrenal medulla) and anticipates what may happen (via activation of the hypothalamo-pituitary adrenal axis resulting in release of corticosteroids by the cortical medulla) (McEwen, 2000; Woda et al., 2016). Morbid consequences can be expected when an individual is affected by a failure of the stress response system to stressors. Therefore, in its commonplace, the term “stress” is often viewed as a negative concept, with morbid consequences (Woda et al., 2016). One of these negative effects is anxiety. With anxiety, fear overcomes all emotions and is accompanied by worry and apprehension (Sylvers et al., 2011; Adhikari, 2014). While there is a definite overlap between stress and anxiety, we will use the term stress as a negative physiological and psychological impact of stressors.

Contextual Influences in the Relationships Between Academic Standing and Academic Self-Beliefs

The goal of the present research was to examine the relationships between academic achievement and the academic self-concept and their role in the construction of academic self-beliefs. In four studies, we assessed (1) the general academic self-knowledge of students, (2) the academic self-knowledge of older students, and (3) academic self-knowledge in a specific discipline when participants were assigned a specific social position. In the first two studies, all participants exhibited self-beliefs related to superiority, including those whose academic standing was poor. The pattern was weaker for poor students whose academic history was longer (Study 3). When referring to a specific academic situation (English class), however, participants endorsed traits as self-descriptive that were consistent with their academic standing. When assigned a specific social position based on academic achievement, only average students endorsed traits that conformed to their assigned social position.

Social Comparison and Knowledge Construction.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to obtain further evidence that cognitive activity is determined to a significant extent by the social situation in which subjects carry out their activity. We studied the effects of socially-induced metacognitive activities on the performance of French elementary and secondary school students. This experiment revealed, first, that the performance of low-achievement students is higher in a social comparison situation than in an ordinary academic situation, and second, that there is a strong, contingent relationship between social comparison and learning.

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.

Fictitious social position of competence, and performance in a foreign-language interaction situation : An experimental approach

A substantial body of research has shown that in experiments where subjects are required to accomplish an intellectual task, their cognitive performance is influenced by the social aspects of the situation. The goal of this study was to determine how a fictitious social position of inferiority or superiority affects cognitive activity. Two studies in which subjects interacted with a partner are reported. In the first, the subject’s position in comparison to his/her partner stemmed from a fictitious level of competence assigned on a single comparative dimension (foreign-language proficiency). In the second, another comparative dimension whose social status was either high (geometry) or low (art) was added. The results showed that in a communicative interaction, what subjects are told about themselves and about their partner along one or two comparative dimensions is a determinant of the quantity and quality of what they produce. Theoretical explanations are proposed. One of them is based on classical studies on the working self-concept. A general point that emerges from these studies is that cognitive performance should be investigated not only in a cognitive and didactic perspective, but also from a sociocognitive standpoint.RésuméUne série de recherches a montré que des sujets soumis expérimentalement à une tâche cognitive produisaient des performances varaiables selon les aspects sociaux de la situation dans laquelle ils devaient agir. L’objectif de l’étude présentée ici consiste à déterminer comment une position sociale fictive de supériorité ou d’infériorité influence l’activité cognitive. Deux expériences dans lesquelles des élèves interagissent avec un partenaire sont rapportées. Dans la première, en utilisant une seule dimension comparative, les élèves sont affectés à une position sociale fondée sur une compétence fictive dans le domaine des langues étrangères. Dans la seconde, une deuxième dimension comparative est introduite. Celle-ci est dotée soit d’un statut social élevé (la géométrie), soit d’un statut social faible (le dessin). Les résultats montrent que l’information de position sociale de compétence fournie aux sujets détermine significativement la quantité et la qualité de ce qu’ils produisent. Des explications théoriques sont développées dont une réfère plus particulièrement aux études classiques sur le soi de travail. Ce qui ressort de ces deux études c’est que les performances cognitives, en plus d’être examinées dans des perspectives cognitive et didactique, doivent être considérées d’un point de vue socio-cognitif.