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The Embodied Syntax of Tools: mechanisms of the reciprocal impact between tool use and syntactic structures in language – SYNTOOL
Can motor training ameliorate syntax in language? Language indeed leverages the sensorimotor circuits handling perception and action to process linguistic sounds and word meaning. Yet, evidence was scant for embodied syntax, the function processing sentence structures. Recently, we revealed that pla
Social climate under the threat of scarcity: Learning from exposure to droughts – INEXTREMIS
Popular beliefs hold that danger brings out the worst in us. Yet, altruism, social trust, and group cohesion are the norms rather than the exception in the face of deadly danger. This brighter picture of humanity as cooperative and trustful when exposed to danger should bring hope for the troubled t
Body representation plasticity in typical and atypical motor development – BODYS
Developmental coordination disorder (DCD), commonly known as dyspraxia, is a major developmental disorder that impacts the autonomy of 5% of the population in several daily life activity and education. While historically attributed to problems of motor control and coordination, recent evidence point
Impact of permeability of the social hierarchy on social perceptions in intergroup relations – PermComp
The dominant ideological climate tends to foster individual mobility as the prevalent way of social climbing. The present project aims to investigate how the permeability of the social hierarchy shapes stereotypes about low and high status groups. Research in social psychology shows that two fundame
Understanding new learning in semantic memory – ULIS
Semantic memory refers to the general knowledge we have about the world while episodic memory refers to the events that we have personally experienced. Semantic memory is the basis of our collective memory, culture. It is generally acquired by repeated learning and becomes independent of the acquisi
Understanding the link between categorization of native and non-native faces and Ingroup preferences: a developmental approach – IGBDEV
People have an implicit tendency to perceive and treat other members of their in-group more positively: Ingroup Preferece (IGP). Its emergence and development remains unclear. 9-month-olds are doing both perceptual and social categories for individuals. We will explore the interactions between face
Metacognitive evaluation of the duration of our actions: behavioral, electrophysiological and interference approaches – MetaTime
Being able to correctly evaluate our own actions is essential both in everyday life but also in learning situations. The current project focusses on a particular parameter of our actions, namely their durations. Indeed, in many situations (playing music, sport activities etc.) the duration of our ac
LAMI : Language-Motor Imagery circuits to improve motor learning and language comprehension – LAMI
LAMI project aims to explore the links between two cognitive systems: language and motor imagery, with the aim of exploiting their link to improve behavioral performance in these systems (specifically at the level of language comprehension and motor learning). Indeed, better knowledge of the links b
Temporal Integration of Visual Information – IntegratedTime
The temporal perception of visual events is not simply delayed relative to physical time. Sensory signals are consolidated in temporal integration windows before a perceptual decision is reached. The existence of these windows is often acknowledged but their role in visual perception is rarely studi
Language Abilities of Bilingual Children with ASD – LABA
Despite the increasing number of bilingual children diagnosed with autism, the impact of bilingualism on language development in autism is still unknown, so much so that abandoning one of the languages of the child is often advised. This project will examine the effect of bilingualism on language de
Inter-individual Differences in Audition – IDA
Do we all hear the world in the same way? Recent auditory illusions involving speech or musical sounds tantalizingly suggest that the answer may be an unexpected “no”. Here, leveraging novel behavioural paradigms, physiological recordings, and causal interventions, we wish to reveal supra-threshold
EXPER: Elucidating how expectations shape subjective perception – EXPER
Current models of cognitive functioning consider visual perception as a proactive process which is not only determined by the characteristics of sensory inputs, but also strongly depends on expectations we have about them. However, the extent to which what we know influence what we see it still a ma
Neurocognitive correlates of the influence of number word syntax on magnitude processing – NUMWORD
Linguistic irregularities of number naming systems, such as inverted number words (e.g., the German number word for 32 translates to “two-and-thirty”), affect the processing of Arabic numerals. Recently, it has been claimed that there is even a number word syntax representation, i.e. a specific syst
Exploring MUSICAL influences on social BEhaviour usING a comparative approach in children, non-human primates and birdS – MUSICALBEINGS
The main objective of this project is to explore the evolutionary origins of musicality and the conditions that have lead to its emergence in some species. To this end, we will test whether music promotes social cohesion in different species. By comparing the influence of listening to music on socia
Improving academic achievement by reducing self-evaluative threats: The moderating role of institutional support in the effectiveness of brief social-psychological interventions – IMPROVE
Brief social-psychological interventions aimed at reframing the way students interpret academic situations can reduce the achievement gaps between high and low achievers but it does not always work. IMPROVE investigates the processes and the conditions under which brief social psychological interven
Serial dependence in perception: basic and applied – SEDEP
Our subjective experience of the visual world is stable, continuous and seamless. How this phenomenology arises is one of the mysteries of cognitive science, because the outside world presents itself to our senses in a discontinuous manner. One mechanism that may lead from variable input to stable e
Sense of Agency in an Automated Society – SAGAS
Over the last decades, the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has deeply reshaped our daily lives, especially through the intelligent automation of a growing number of processes such as driving, cooking, manufacturing or medical assisting. The constant growth of automation leads to obvious benefit
Predicting speaker's usages in oral French : quantitative, experimental and comparative approaches of syntactic alternation – PULCO
One of the main aims of current work in quantitative and experimental syntax is to identify factors with predictive power on speakers' choices when faced with syntactic alternations, i.e. cases where the speaker has a choice between two or more syntactic structures to express equivalent meanings. Dr
Individual neurophysiological SENSoRY profiles in AUtism – SensAUry
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication, restrictive and repetitive behaviours, but also atypical sensory responses. While a majority of studies have focused on atypical responses to social stimuli (like human voices, faces or
On the Cognitive principles underlying operational biases in the temporal domain – CoPrOBTeD
Space, time and number are intertwined dimensions at the cognitive and neural level. Recent evidence suggests that numerical and temporal information is projected onto a spatially organized conceptual dimension (i.e. a conceptual space). The Operational Momentum Effect (OME) can be seen as a consequ
Speech-in-noise Intelligibility Deficits: Designing Psychophysical and Electrophysiological Markers of Spectral Shape-Coding Sensitive to Cochlear Synaptopathy – INSPECTSYN
At present, it is estimated that over 10% of individuals with clinically-normal audiograms have significant difficulty understanding speech-in-noise (SPiN). In particular, synaptopathy - the loss of synapses connecting the cochlea to the auditory nerve, caused by aging or noise exposure - is thought
Sleep as a boost for cognitive development in preschool children – SOMMAT
About 30% of children are sleep-deprived with real consequences for daytime functioning. Pre-schoolers with short sleep duration or low sleep quality also show lower cognitive functioning. Sleeping less than 10 hours per night in childhood doubles the risk of exhibiting hyperactivity symptoms. In ad
Strategies and Cognitive Aging : The Role of Emotions – StratAgEm
In all cognitive domains, emotions influence either positively or negatively cognitive performance. Moreover, emotion-cognition interactions change during aging: Some effects of emotion on cognition decrease with age, others increase. However, we ignore the underlying age-related changes in emotion-
Measuring the effects of early life unpredictability and volatility on the psychological development of individuals. – eLIFUN
This three-year interdisciplinary project aims to study within 3 research axes how different forms of uncertainty that characterize early life environments can shape human psychology in the long-term. Axis 1 will use psychometrics to validate a classification of the ecology of early life uncertainty
The Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Syntax in Language Production and Perception – DynSyn
The goal of this project is to study the neurobiology of syntax, the brain’s ability to structure linguistic elements and create meaning, focusing on two understudied topics: (1) Spatiotemporal dynamics, namely ‘how do the neural sources of basic combinatorial syntax manifest over time?’; (2) Langua
Sentential Negation Across the Globe. The fine-grained structure of a linguistic universal – SNAG
Negation is a universal property of human language. Every language has a means to negate a sentence. However, languages vary as to how many different forms they have at their disposal to express sentential negative meaning. Whilst there is only one sentential negative marker in English or French to
Lack of social touch: markers, mechanisms and compensation – LackSocialTouch
Social touch has been shown to be crucial for development, well-being as well as to be one of the most efficient ways to communicate affective emotions. However, despite its importance, the consequences of lack of social touch has been little studied in human adults, while tactile interactions have
Attentional CONTROL during word LEARNing: the role of talking faces during word LEARNing – CONTROLEARN
From 18 months, children acquire words at a remarkable nonlinear pace, a phenomenon called vocabulary burst. While this burst has been widely reported, the mechanisms underlying it remain unknown. I posit that one key mechanism behind it is the development of attentional control towards talking face
The perception of speech in noise in infancy, the role of auditory development – BabySIN
This project aims to characterize the role of early auditory development in the ability to perceive speech in noisy conditions for infants with normal hearing and with hearing impairment. We will capitalize on an interdisciplinary approach linking developmental psycholinguistics and psychoacoustics,
Spatial influences on verbal memory – SPATVERB
Spatialization is a phenomenon by which spatial information can supplement cognitive processes to memorize serial information not necessarily spatial beforehand. Although spatialization seems to possess an innate dimension, its left-right direction also appears to be culturally determined. For insta