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The PreP project deals with the attentional limitations that cause dual-task interference and the changes that occur across the entire lifespan. PreP aims at better understanding and “combatting” the prominent source of dual-task interference: the processing bottleneck that prevents central operatio

Learning to speak, from simple babbling to pronouncing complex sentences, requires learning to combine articulatory movements with abstract linguistic knowledge. This learning is shaped by the mutual constraints that the perception and production systems exert on each other, but a biophysical descri

Auditory hallucinations (AH) are among the most frequent and disturbing experiences described by individuals with psychosis and other mental and neurological disorders. AH are also present in the general population. The adoption of a symptom-focused approach has led to significant improvements to t

The spread of online fake news is emerging as a major threat to human society and democracy. Logical reasoning seems to be critical for media truth discernment, regardless of whether it is consistent with one’s belief. Fact checking is the most common method to cope with fake news but its efficienc

Our project draws both from computational psychiatry and cognitive psychology. It seeks to renew our understanding of attention and its deficits. Our hypothesis is that attention is the tuning of the exploration-exploitation trade-off. Distraction corresponds to an imbalance in favor of exploration

DANS-APP mobilizes interdisciplinary expertise and innovative methodologies to improve the perceptual-motor procedural learning (PMPL) abilities in typically and atypically developing children. The objectives are (1) to conceive a tool assessing properly PMPL, (2) to evaluate the immediate and long-

Although learning science has established general effects such as retrieval practice, spacing, and interleaving, which provide rough guidelines for improving learning, exactly how to fine-tune the learning experience in such a way as to optimise long-term memory retention in a real educational setti

The greatest accomplishments of our species result from a process known as cumulative culture. Computers, spaceships and scientific theories haven’t been invented by single, isolated individuals. Instead, they result from a collective process in which innovations are gradually added to existing cult

Stress, broadly defined as the response of the organism to challenging conditions, is central to life adaptation. However, stress may also have negative consequences in many domains (e.g., academic success, decision making, health). DAY-STRESS is anchored in a social psychology and neurophysiology a

The present project stems from two fundamental observations concerning economic decision-making: 1) the subjective value of an option is deeply affected by the other options presented simultaneously or in the recent past (context-dependence). 2) the subjective value of an option is different if th

The term Cumulative Technological Culture (CTC) describes the increase in the efficiency and complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. The origin of CTC is a fascinating conundrum, considered in 2005 by the journal Science as one of the 125 big scientific questions of

Speech production stability is crucial for efficient speech communication in basic daily situations. While auditory and somatosensory feedback contribute to speech motor control, it is still unknown how these sensory inputs interact to ensure the required stability. Our hypotheses are 1) that somato

Macular degeneration is the main cause of visual impairment in Western countries. It is manifested by the gradual appearance of a scotoma in the macula which causes central vision loss and considerably handicaps patients in their everyday life. ReVis-MD is an interdisciplinary and multi-centric

The study of discourse is of particular interest for understanding the linguistic and cognitive difficulties of people with neurodegenerative diseases. Analyzing fluency and disfluencies (hesitations, reformulations, interruptions, errors, pauses, prosodic organization) in such studies is particular

In this research program, we use a multidisciplinary approach (social psychology and sociology of education) to examine both socio-cultural factors and the psychological mechanisms of prejudice in adolescents. More specifically, we examine how norms of social integration shape immigrant prejudice am

Background. The disposition to believe what others communicate, or epistemic trust, plays a central role in humans’ learning and cognitive development. It is crucial for the transmission of scientific, historical, technical, moral or religious beliefs. It also lies at the heart of schooling, by supp

In domains as varied as vaccination or climate change a gap between the scientific consensus and public opinion. The existence of these consensus gaps speaks to the difficulty of communicating about science. To improve on science communication, we develop a multi-pronged approach: (i) We look for ps

We test two hypotheses on the role of prosody in speech motor control. 1) the prosodic structure shapes the coordination between the rhythmic regularities present in the speech signal at different time scales. This has the effect of constraining the interactions between the many individual phonetic

Power imbalance occupies a central place in reflections on gender relations. Be it sexual violence (e.g. #MeToo), wage inequalities, or unequal conversation dynamics (e.g. mansplaining), the control of power by men is at the heart of current societal concerns and gender studies. The concept of gende

Saccades and smooth pursuit eye movements are extremely plastic and previous evidence demonstrated that human observers learn to adjust these movements depending on the reinforcement contingencies. However, limitations on eye movement contextual learning have been reported which we attribute to the

Transgression of moral rules generally triggers moral indignation in the form of other-condemning emotions such as moral disgust and anger. However, little is known about how moral events prompt more anger or disgust experience and how appraisal of moral events is critical for the regulation social

Most individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) suffer from speech production impairments. The impairments need to be addressed as they decrease the communicative abilities of individuals with PD and affect their social life. The current project aims at exploring the relevance of rhythmic priming (i.

During verbal communication individuals tend to align at different linguistic levels. Similarly, playing music requires fine temporal alignment and coordination abilities, in order to anticipate and adapt to other’s actions in real time. The aim of the project is to study the effect of musical rhyth

Poverty is associated with a wide range of detrimental outcomes ranging from increased rates of teenage pregnancies to diminished investment in health and education. There are of course many causes behind these behaviours but recent work highlights the potential role of psychological changes that ar

Cross-linguistically, segments occurring in prosodically prominent positions manifest on the one hand a resistance to phonological processes and to neutralization, and on the other hand, they are frequently the target of a small class of phonological processes. This project proposes a unified, phone

While human nonverbal vocalisations such as laughs, screams and moans are ubiquitous in our everyday social interactions, beyond research on babies’ cries and adult laughter we still know surprisingly little about their place in human and animal communication. Here, we propose an ambitious research

The ability to read is the foundation of human education and social progress. Yet we are far from having reached a full understanding of how expert reading skills are acquired. Despite adequate instruction, children and adults do not all reach expert reading skills, with implications for many activi

A critical issue in today’s ageing society is how to better understand and mitigate for cognitive changes. The central topic of this proposed research is metamemory: the ability to reflect upon and monitor our memory. Understanding metamemory would help us understand the concept of ‘cognitive reserv

Technology radically changed our interactions with objects and people, inducing distant and indirect outcomes: an action as simple as a computer mouse click can have far-flung consequences in space and time. The multisensory coding of the near, PeriPersonal space (PPS), enables those interactions wi

Conversation is a ubiquitous and important activity in our lives. Cognitive scientists consider it as a hallmark of human cognition as it relies on a sophisticated ability for coordination and shared attention (Tomasello & Rakoczy, 2007; Laland & Seed, 2021). Prominent computer scientists have descr

Education is not only a learning process but also a decision process in the sense that, throughout the education path, individuals have to choose which school to enroll at, which track to follow, or which class to attend. These decisions intervene very early during the education process. At that age

Learning to read lasts over several years to attain a certain level of expertise to process words through a fast, automatic and parallel processing of their letters. Whereas studies showed a visual specialization for print emerging shortly after the start of learning to read, there is essential info