Seminar agenda (Persons from outside the IPSY institute are invited to contact the seminar organizer)
Agenda des séminaires (Les personnes extérieures à l’institut IPSY sont invitées à prendre contact avec l’organisateur·trice du séminaire)
2025
Wednesday, January 15, 2 pm
Room: salle du conseil A224
Language, exactness, and the compositional structure of number words
David Barner, UC San Diego (USA)
What is the origin of the human ability to represent large numbers exactly? In this talk, I argue that it derives from three core capacities: (1) the ability to treat words, text, beads, or fingers as symbols, (2) the ability to place symbols and objects into one-to-one correspondence, and (3) the ability to compose these symbols syntactically. Prior to mastery of a compositional counting system, young children and non-numerate adults can often label and reason about small exact numbers, but are restricted to representing, comparing, and matching large sets approximately. Also, even children who know some number words and who can accurately count often don't seem to know that large number words must represent number exactly. I argue that a key to unlocking large exact number concepts is the ability to syntactically combine symbols that represent smaller quantities in order to represent larger ones. I show that mastering the syntax of number words allows children to understand that ever-larger numbers can be created, and that numbers must therefore never end. This learning varies cross-linguistically depending on how easy it is to notice the structure of number words, and can be trained in the lab in much younger children, when simplified counting systems are invented.
Invited by Virginie Crollen
2024
Monday 9 December 10.30 am
Room: D312
Evaluative Conditioning: When does pairing with affective valence lead to an evaluative change?
Prof. Tal Moran, The Open University of Israel
The idea that our evaluations of people and objects are shaped by their pairing with affective stimuli is central in psychology research. We can see applications of this idea in advertising, product designs, and health campaigns. The effect of pairing an object with a valenced stimulus on the evaluation of the object is called the Evaluative Conditioning (EC) effect. In this talk, I will overview a few of my research projects that explore questions related to the conditions under which EC effects occur. The first question is whether the specific content of the affective stimulus, which is paired with an object, influences the EC effect. I will show evidence that pairings have a stronger effect on evaluation when the affective stimulus is relevant to the paired object. The second question is whether the EC effect occurs even when people know the pairing does not indicate valence similarity between the object and the paired affective stimulus. I will show evidence that the EC effect occurs even when people know the pairings do not reflect valence similarity. The third question is whether EC procedures (i.e., exposure to the repeated pairing of an object with affective stimuli) are effective as interventions to modify evaluations and their linked problematic or desirable behaviors. I will describe the results of a meta-analysis testing this question, which found a small effect that is overestimated due to publication bias. Finally, I will present new lines of research testing how we can use EC principles to create effective interventions to fight affective polarization and prejudice.
Invited by: Olivier Corneille
Mardi 5 novembre de 10h45 à 12h15
Salle E139
La motivation scolaire des études secondaires aux études doctorales : Conceptualisation multidimensionnelle et approche centrée sur la personne
David Litalien, Québec, Canada
Les études postsecondaires s’accompagnent d’importants changements et défis. Les environnements sociaux dans lesquels les étudiantes et étudiants évoluent peuvent favoriser ou entraver leur motivation, considérée comme un déterminant central de persévérance et de la réussite scolaires. S’appuyant la théorie de l’autodétermination (Ryan et Deci, 2017) et sa conceptualisation multidimensionnelle de la motivation, divers travaux de recherche seront présentés. Alliant approches centrées sur les variables et sur les personnes, la représentation de ces construits motivationnels, leur combinaison, leur évolution et leurs associations avec diverses variables d’intérêt seront explorées.
Invité par Benoit Galand
Wednesday, octobre 30, 3:00 pm
Room: E241
Layered Stressors: Chronic and Acute Alcohol Effects on Cardiovascular Functioning During Cognitive and Physical Challenges
Neel Muzumdar, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA
Chronic alcohol use deteriorates cardiovascular function, but symptoms often remain hidden until substantial damage has occurred. Early identification of preclinical markers during nascent drinking patterns is thus crucial for prevention. According to allostatic load theory, repeated intoxication imposes cumulative cardiovascular stress, which is further compounded by additional factors like established drinking patterns and polysubstance use. These behaviors ultimately erode the system’s adaptive capacity, resulting in reduced heart rate variability (HRV) and elevated blood pressure – early markers of cardiovascular disease.
Allostatic load theory suggests that inefficient stress responses signify early signs of physiological deterioration. This research experimentally applies the allostatic load framework to assess how chronic alcohol use contributes to inefficient cardiovascular stress responses in young adults. In the first experiment, we measure the impact of chronic alcohol consumption on HRV during a cognitive load stressor (a timed mental math task). We also assess how frequent cannabis use compounds this effect, as cannabis-induced stress may exacerbate the cardiovascular effects of binge drinking. The second experiment investigates the acute, nonlinear effects of alcohol on blood pressure across the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) curve, with intermittent handgrip challenges serving as secondary stressors that compound the impact of acute alcohol intoxication. Vascular deterioration from chronic binge drinking, which gradually increases cardiovascular disease risk, may become evident in young adults when the vasculature is sufficiently stressed.
Results will be presented at the seminar, providing some insight into how alcohol and additional cardiovascular stressors interact to disrupt cardiovascular function. This research may offer novel approaches for detecting hidden cardiovascular decline in otherwise healthy young adults, with implications for early disease prevention.
Invited by: Mateo Leganes-Fonteneau, Pierre Maurage & LEP
Wednesday, October 16, 3:00 pm
Room: E241
Ecological momentary assessment and network analyses to study the relationships between cues, craving, substance use and clinical insight in substance use disorder
Laura Lambert, Université de Bordeaux
Craving, an intense and unwanted desire to use, is a fluctuating phenomenon and a major risk factor to relapse in substance use disorder (SUD). The Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), a method that allows one to study event chronology through the collection of data in near real time, via repeated assessments delivered in daily life, has become increasingly recommended in psychology. Using EMA, our first study conducted ten years ago aimed to assess the prospective relationship between cues (conditional stimuli), craving and consumption using hierarchical linear models in SUD (Fatseas et al, 2015). A recent perspective in sychopathology posits that mental disorder symptoms are causally mutually dependent and dynamically interact with each other, and that network analysis (NA) allows exploration of these interrelationships. Conceptualizing substance use as a dynamic system of causal elements may provide valuable insights on the interaction of craving with other symptoms in the process of relapse. In this perspective, reusing data from our first study and a new dataset, we aimed to improve the understanding of these daily life dynamic interrelationships by way of dynamic networks analyses applied to EMA datasets (Serre et al, in press).
In parallel, as craving is an important target in the treatment process, the identification of the factors likely to increase or decrease the strength of the association between craving and substance use in daily life was needed. Clinical insight, defined as the ability of a person suffering from SUD to recognize it, his / her symptoms and to accept medical care, was a possible candidate. In previous SUD studies, clinical insight has always been studied as a stable trait, however theories from other mental disorders suggest that it may show daily variations. Our last studies conducted during my thesis aimed to design a scale to assess
clinical insight in EMA and to examine the prospective association between clinical insight fluctuations and craving intensity in daily life (Lambert et al, in prep).
Invited by Pierre Maurage & LEP
Tuesday, octobre 1, 2 - from 2 pm to 3:30 pm (erratum)
Room: Salle du conseil A224
The characteristics of effective psychotherapists and their development
Erkki Heinonen, University of Oslo
Recent meta-analytic findings indicate that differences between psychotherapists account for a notable variation of treatment outcomes. Yet there is relatively little knowledge on the characteristics of effective psychotherapists. The presentation will review the existing knowledge on psychotherapists’ professional and personal characteristics as predictors of treatment outcome. The presentation will also outline some future research directions addressing which of these characteristics can be modified by training and how. These include deliberate practice of different facilitative interpersonal skills; and psychotherapist character virtues as a bridge connecting the professional capacities and personal attributes of effective psychotherapists.
Emmanuelle Zech et Jochem Willemsen, Hubert de Condé
Thursday, September 26 10:30 am
Room: More 55
Here is the Microsoft Teams link to join us online
Levels of emotional awareness: A cognitive-developmental approach to alexithymia
Richard Lane, University of Arizona (Tucson)
Sifneos and Nemiah described alexithymia as a developmental deficit in 1972, but the nature of that deficit wasn’t described until 1987, when Gary Schwartz and I proposed that alexithymia consisted of an impairment in emotional awareness along a cognitive-developmental continuum. This talk will describe the theory of levels of emotional awareness, the performance measure called the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) used to operationalize it, and the findings from over 260 papers published to date using the LEAS. These findings have expanded our understanding of the biological (physiological and neuroanatomical) underpinnings and clinical (mental and physical health) correlates of low emotional awareness. In addition to reviewing the latter, this talk will highlight a conceptual bridge between emotional awareness and the classic definition of alexithymia on which the TAS-20 is based, important new findings from a prospective study of emotional awareness as a predictor of breast cancer mortality, and efforts currently underway to make the LEAS more accessible through digital administration and automated scoring.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
Monday 9 September - two Seminars:
- 2.00 pm - 3.30 pm
Room: Socr 40
Transference, transformation, and transmission: some clinical and conceptual issues
Erik Stänicke, University of Oslo, Norway
As analysts we know that ideals are of significance for us humans. Ideals can give us purpose, something to fight for and even meaning, yet, ideals can also be harsh and haunt us, as an attacking super-ego. In psychoanalysis as a discipline that study the human mind, besides being a method of treatment, we also have ideals. Some of these ideals are on par with academic science, they show us a way of developing theories, but other ideals may plague us. In this presentation I will have two lines of thoughts on scientific ideals in psychoanalysis: Firstly, I will argue that within psychoanalysis the status of theories is atypical, if I am correct, especially if we compare the status of theories to other academic disciplines. And, I aim at describing some characteristics with our take on theories. Secondly, I will argue that psychoanalysis has a specific epistemology which partly can shed light on the status of our theories.
- 11.00 - 12.30
Room: Socr 40
Self-harm, self-harm content online, and self-identity: Developmental challenges during adolescence in a digital age
Line Indrevoll, Stänicke, University of Oslo, Norway
The topic of this lecture is social belonging and self-development during adolescence in a digital age. Today, Internet and social media are integrated parts of youth’s lives but enable both social contact and digital risks (Livingstone et al., 2022). Youths may be exposed to risk content like videos of violence, involved in cyberbullying or exploited in online sexual abuse, or becoming engaged in online groups sharing and promoting self-harm and suicide content. Quantitative and qualitative reviews highlight how engagement in self-harm content online may trigger self-harming but also bring social support (Merchant et al., 2017; Susi et al., 2023; Stänicke et al., 2023).
Findings are presented from a multiple case interview study of 20 young people, interviewed first as adolescents (12-18 years of age) and then after five years (18-23 years of age). All self-harmed, were involved in treatment and engaged in self-harm content online during adolescence. Three cases illustrate how self-harm may serve different functions of representing, coping with, and sharing difficult self-experiences. Further, engagement in self-harm content online may offer a place to express, to get support, or a place to belong among lonely and vulnerable youths.
The findings are related to knowledge on adolescence as a transformative life period characterized by emotional, biological, cognitive, psychological, and social changes. Importantly, in this period, friends and peers become important for sharing good and difficult experiences, for belonging, creative exploration, and getting to know oneself and others’ feelings and thoughts (Erikson, 1968; Fonagy et al., 2019). The online arena is suggested as an extended peer arena (Stänicke, 2022). Inspired by Winnicott’s concept (1953/1971). of ‘potential space’ and ‘transitional object’, online activity is discussed as having transitional qualities – enabling an intermediate area in between the inner and outer world. Engagement in self-harm content online may serve as a transitional object for relational and personal exploration. However, the adolescent is still challenged to develop less destructive affect regulation strategies, establish borders between an inner and outer world, and embrace vulnerability and aggression as part of their self-identity. In this way, digital experiences may both facilitate illusions and disillusion processes in self-development during adolescence.
Invited by: Jochem Willemsen
Tuesday 27 August 10.30am to 12.00
Room: E241
New insights and approaches for dealing with response biases in psychological assessment
Jessica Röhner, University of Bamberg, Germany
Over the course of conducting psychological assessments, researchers will most likely encounter the phenomenon of response bias. There are many different terms associated with distorted responses, such as lies, social desirability, deceptive self-presentation, faking, carelessness, self-deception, impression distortion, simulation, and dissimulation.
In this presentation, I will provide insight into the fundamentals of response biases in psychological measures. First, I will present typical examples of response biases and their facets. Second, I will take a look at the frequencies of these response biases. Third, I will present effects (e.g., on means, reliability, and validity) and consequences (e.g., erroneous decisions in assessment) of response biases. Fourth, I will discuss strategies that can be applied to prevent or detect and correct response biases. Last but not least, I will present an overview of current research and approaches for dealing with response distortion.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
Tuesday 18 June 10.00 am
Room: to be determined
Enhancing Mental Health and Quality of Working Life among Healthcare Workers in Italy: Associated Factors and Programmatic Approaches
Barbara Muzzulini, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
Healthcare workers are at the cornerstone of healthcare systems, yet they face important stressors that can significantly impact their Quality of Working Life (QoWL) and mental health. Critical working conditions are consistently reported by health care workers who generally operate under high levels of physical and psychological stress due to individual and organizational factors. Furthermore, research shows how the overall quality of patient care is affected by levels of stress and phenomena such as burnout and compassion fatigue. The concept of QoWL entails the individual evaluation of work experience in terms of satisfaction with one’s job and career situation, perception of control and safety, working conditions, general wellbeing, work-life balance. If literature highlights that QoWL is a priority calling the need to intervene, on the other side there is still an ongoing debate about how to intervene. I will present ongoing projects aimed at identifying levels of QoWL, burnout and compassion fatigue among healthcare workers operating in the Italian healthcare system, with a particular focus on emergency departments. I will discuss the importance of implementing different type of programmes within healthcare institutions (i.e., at individual or organizational level and multi-level) to promote well-being and improve the QoWL, reduce turnover rates, and ultimately improve the quality of patients care.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
Monday 17 June 3 pm
Room: Socr 42
Sleep enhances the perceptual representation of new written words: Evidence from overnight cumulative learning in the word superiority effect
Nicolas Dumay, University of Exeter
In this talk, I will use the word-superiority effect (i.e., the fact that letters are more visible in words than in pseudowords) to demonstrate that sleep plays an instrumental role in turning new objects into holistic representations able to support identification of their parts. Experiment 1 relies on a Reicher-Wheeler situation to look at whether overnight sleep strengthens the competitive influence of a new orthographic neighbour (e.g., 'alarchy' for 'anarchy'). It shows that letter identification is better for trained pseudowords, but worse for their untrained base words, after immediate or delayed sleep compared to no sleep conditions. To neutralize this sleep-related bias towards newly learnt strings, Experiment 2 teaches participants pairs of lookalikes (i.e., 'alarchy' and "afarchy") and pit them against each other. It shows that sleeps genuinely enhances the ability of the newly learnt strings to support letter identification: At the test, 12-hr-old items show a larger word superiority effect compared to 0-hr-old items, but only after a retention interval including sleep. At the retest, 24 hr later, items slept on for the first time showed increased facilitation compared to pre-sleep levels, whereas items slept on twice showed a cumulative effect compared what was achieved after one night. I conclude that sleep contributes to the word superiority effect in two ways: (a) sleep makes newly learnt letter strings more likely to attract identification decisions to the detriment of long-consolidated words; and (b) sleep also boosts perceptual learning of orthographic information, with the result that as early as the next day lexical distinctions become easier.
Invited by: Arnaud Szmalec
Monday 17 June 2.30pm
Room: Salle du conseil A224
Characteristics and Social Function of Flashbulb Memories: remembering important public events and Bonding with a Group
Barbara Muzzulini, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
My research delves into the intricate process of autobiographical memory formation and its multifaced social function. In my studies, I have focused on a particular type of autobiographical memory, that is flashbulb memory: the memory of the personal circumstances in which an individual learned about an important and emotional news. While the bulk of studies show consensus about the cognitive and emotional factors influencing the formation of flashbulb memories, there is still a debate about the characteristics that make these memories unique. Moreover, only few studies have closely investigated the relationship between flashbulb memory and social identities. As a first focus, I will present studies aimed at understanding flashbulb memories’ key characteristics and their retention over long periods of time and dedicate specific attention to these memories’ consistency, vividness, and perceptive features. As a second focus, I will present my work on flashbulb memories and their involvement in social identity formation, drawing attention to a type of group bonding called identity fusion – a visceral feeling of oneness with a group that is thought to result from the sharing of emotional, often negatively charged, memories. I will discuss how the memory of learning about and experiencing recent events such as Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic may ground strong intragroup bonding.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
Lundi 17 juin 11h00
Local : E139
Différences interindividuelles dans la réponse hypnotique en tant que trait latent : Corrélats neuronaux et modèles de réponse discrets de la susceptibilité hypnotique
Mathieu Landry et David Ogez, Université de Montréal
Les phénomènes hypnotiques présentent une grande variabilité entre les individus. Nous avons mené des recherches en utilisant l'échelle de susceptibilité hypnotique de Harvard pour explorer ces différences interindividuelles dans l'hypnose. Dans une première étude (N=40), nous avons utilisé l'électroencéphalographie (EEG) pour identifier les corrélats neuronaux de la susceptibilité hypnotique avant et après une procédure d’induction hypnotique. Confirmant la nature complexe de ces phénomènes, des analyses de classification du niveau de susceptibilité hypnotique sur la base de patrons multivariés dans l’EEG montrent que plusieurs attributs dérivés de la décomposition spectrale et de patrons de connectivité permettent de différencier les individus à faible et haute susceptibilité hypnotique, autant avant qu’après la procédure d’induction. Néanmoins, en phase avec l'idée que la susceptibilité hypnotique représente un trait latent chez les individus, les approches de comparaisons de modèles et de classification d’attributs montrent que l'activité apériodique du signal EEG mesurée avant même l’induction hypnotique, donc à l’extérieur de l’hypnose, représente la caractéristique cérébrale la plus importante pour distinguer le niveau de susceptibilité hypnotique. Dans une deuxième étude (N=681), nous avons exploré les capacités latentes de réponse à l'hypnose en nous basant sur la structure factorielle sous-jacente à la susceptibilité hypnotique. Notre objectif était de d’évaluer la distinction conceptuelle entre les individus à faible et haute susceptibilité à partir d’analyses dirigées par les données. Nos résultats invalident cette distinction conceptuelle omniprésente dans la recherche scientifique sur l’hypnose, alors que l’analyse de regroupement des scores montre que les individus à faible susceptibilité hypnotique ne forment pas un groupe homogène. Nous expliquerons pourquoi ce résultat suggère que les individus qui présentent un score de faible susceptibilité présente le potentiel de répondre plus fortement à l’hypnose.
Invitants : Emmanuelle Zech et Jochem Willemsen
Monday 17 June 10:30 am
Room: Salle du conseil A224
Affectivity in personal memories
Marina Trakas, National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina
Building upon early 20th-century discussions surrounding the concept of "affective memory,” this presentation contends that personal memories are essentially affective. While inherently affective, this affectivity can take various forms. Firstly, the affectivity can be the intentional object of the personal memory. The same event can be remembered either descriptively or evaluatively. When it is remembered evaluatively, the memory is explicitly focused on the evaluative properties of the event, that is, on the evaluations the subject makes about the events in terms of damages, benefits, morality, and/or self-image. When it is remembered descriptively, although the memory is focused on the event’s descriptive properties that can, in principle, be corroborated intersubjectively, affectivity may also be present on the periphery of the memory. Secondly, personal memories can adopt various affective perspectives based on the individual affected by the remembered event (whether present or past) and the degree of identification or detachment between present and past selves. Within the continuum stretching from the most "authentic” cases of the first-person perspective to the third-person perspective proper, I distinguish the following potential affective perspectives: first-person internal; first-person external; nostalgic; third-person; and third-person detached. Affectivity, therefore, permeates personal memories, albeit in a multitude of forms.
Invited by: Aline Cordonnier
Wednesday 22 May 3.30pm
Room: E139
Novel approaches for understanding the neurocomputational basis of interoception and emotion-cognition interactions
Ryan Smith, Laureate Institute for Brain Research & University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
How the brain detects and interprets signals from within the body – a process known as interoception – may play an important role in generating subjective feelings and contribute to psychiatric disorders. While interoception has received growing attention from researchers in recent years, the precise computational mechanisms through which the brain processes interoceptive signals, and how these signals influence emotion and cognition, remain unclear. In this talk, I will present recent computational modelling studies we have performed to better characterize these mechanisms across three interoceptive channels: gastrointestinal, cardiac, and respiratory. First, I will describe results of modeling gastrointestinal (GI) perception as Bayesian inference during EEG recording. As hypothesized within predictive processing models, these results show that individual differences in prior expectations, and in subjective estimates of the reliability (precision) of GI signals, have inhibitory and excitatory influences on neural responses, respectively. Preliminary data also suggest stronger priors against feeling stomach sensations in Anorexia Nervosa patients, and asymmetric learning rates that maintain this bias. Next, I will describe newly replicated results of modeling heartbeat perception as Bayesian inference, which suggest that subjective estimates of the precision of cardiac signals may be less flexible in multiple psychiatric patient samples (depression, anxiety, substance use, and eating disorders) relative to healthy participants. Finally, I will present results of a recently completed study examining how respiratory interoception, and associated anxiety, influence neurocomputational mechanisms of planning and decision-making on reward-learning tasks, and how this differs between healthy and transdiagnostic patient samples. Overall, these results provide evidence for neurocomputational mechanisms of brain-body interactions across multiple interoceptive channels and how they contribute to subjective feelings and cognition. They may also highlight novel mechanistic treatment targets that could be evaluated in future clinical studies.
Invited by Pierre Maurage, Mateo Leganes-Fonteneau et le LEP
Wednesday 22 May 1.30pm
Room: Socr 43
Varieties of Emotional Experience: An Examination of Affective Processes in Depression, Anxiety, and Wellbeing
Kristin Gainey, University of Western Australia
Affective processes play a central role in our moment-by-moment experience, interfacing with cognition and social interactions to provide critical information about environmental demands. However, sometimes affect functions less effectively, increasing risk for mental health difficulties or reduced wellbeing. In this talk, I describe my lab's work in this area, focusing on (1) the role of mindfulness and decentering in facilitating mental health and wellbeing, and (2) emotion regulation strategies and abilities that may protect against or increase risk for depression and anxiety. Most of these studies were conducted in naturalistic setting in daily life using ecological momentary assessment, to allow for a contextualized understanding of how affective processes fluctuate over time and across situations for each individual. Another overarching aim of this work is to improve assessment of emotional processes and symptoms, and to better understand their structure and construct validity. I will discuss theoretical and clinical implications of these studies, as well as ongoing/future projects that extend this line of research.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
Tuesday 21 May 3pm
Room: Salle du conseil A224
What maintains the over selection of appetitive stimuli in eating disorders?
Blair Shevlin, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Eating disorders like binge eating pose a major public health challenge as they are associated with costly psychosocial impairments and confer increased health risks. The cognitive mechanisms that maintain this compulsivity are poorly understood. Binge eating has been linked to aberrant reward seeking, pursuing highly appetitive foods while forgoing opportunities to receive alternative rewards. Prevailing models acknowledge that altered reward processing likely plays a major role in binge-type eating disorders yet do not account for how this irregular reward processing maintains compulsive eating behaviors, nor how emotional distress can disrupt these processes.
This talk will propose a neurocomputational framework for evaluating whether an altered ability to detect differences between potential rewards promotes the maladaptive overselection of highly palatable rewards associated with binge-type eating disorders. In the first part of the talk, I will review a series of experiments that demonstrate how healthy adults are better able to identify the relative differences between high-value rewards than the equivalent differences between low-value rewards.
These experiments will motivate the presentation of a neurocomputational model of decision-making. Next, I will discuss research demonstrating how negative emotions bias individuals toward prioritizing taste over health in food choices, and how this effect is exaggerated in bulimia nervosa. I will then conclude with a discussion of a new set of experiments designed to assess stimulus-specific reward processing deficits in individuals with binge-eating.
Overall, this talk will articulate a framework for understanding the neurocomputations governing maladaptive decision-making in eating disorders.
Invited by Pierre Maurage, Mado Gautier et le LEP
Vendredi 17 mai 13h30
Lieu : Institut de Psychiatrie Intégré (IPI, cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc)
Enjeux psychosociaux entourant la maladie grave de l’enfant – une réflexion engagée
Josée Chénard, Université du Québec en Outaouais
L’annonce d’un diagnostic chez l’enfant puis l’accompagnement qui s’ensuit, ébranlent la famille au point de créer certaines vulnérabilités. De nombreuses études rendent compte des répercussions de la maladie sur les familles particulièrement celles assumant des soins complexes et continus à domicile. Ces retombées prennent place dans un contexte où services publics et les associations peinent à répondre aux besoins réels des enfants et de leur famille. Les travaux de recherche que nous avons menés au cours des dernières années ont alimenté une réflexion autour des enjeux psychosociaux entourant la maladie grave et les incapacités physiques/intellectuelles de l’enfant ainsi que les pratiques d’accompagnement psychosocial. Ce séminaire sera l’occasion de présenter quelques résultats de recherche menées au Québec, mais surtout de réfléchir et d’envisager ensemble des pistes d’action et de recherche novatrices.
Invitée par : Magali Lahaye, Isabelle Aujoulat (IRSS), Anne-Catherine Dubois (IRSS), Anne Wintgens (service de psychiatrie infanto-juvénile, cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc)
Jeudi 16 mai 11h00
local E241
Rôle de l’anxiété, de la peur et du manque de contrôle dans la compréhension et prévention du malaise vagal lié au don de sang
Cécile Sénémeaud, Université de Caen
Les malaises vagaux (MV) survenant pendant ou après le don de sang représentent 85% des événements indésirables graves liés au don (20ème Rapport National d’Hémovigilance, 2023). Ils sont en augmentation depuis 2017 avec un taux d’incidence 2 fois plus élevé pour les jeunes donneurs·ses inexpérimentés (77 sur 10 000) et font d’ailleurs partie des freins les plus significatifs du retour au don (Bagot et al., 2016). Depuis quelques années, les facteurs de risque associés aux malaises vagaux, leurs conséquences négatives sur la santé des donneur-se-s et les dispositifs mis en place pour les prévenir, font par conséquent l’objet d’une littérature internationale assez abondante (voir pour récentes revues Donald, et al., 2019 ; Thijsen, et al., 2019). L’anxiété et les peurs liées à la situation de prélèvement sont répertoriés parmi les facteurs de risque les plus significatifs de la survenue de MV. Pourtant, les processus psychologiques à l’origine des états émotionnels préalables au don n’ont été que très peu investigués et l’efficacité des dispositifs de prévention sur la réduction de ces états très peu évaluée (Gilchrist, et al., 2021).
L’objectif des travaux que nous menons et présentés lors de cette conférence est d’une part, d’approfondir les processus psychologiques inhérents à l’anxiété et à la peur en situation de don de sang en lien avec le sentiment de perte de contrôle, déterminant psychologique fondamental de l’anxiété en général (Gallagher et al., 2014). D’autre part, il est de concevoir et tester des dispositifs de prévention des craintes des primo-donneur-se-s permettant de rehausser la perception de contrôle et réduire par conséquent les symptômes de malaise. Les résultats d’une première étude expérimentale, menée en milieu écologique auprès de primo-donneurs·ses, seront détaillés. Ils montrent que, par rapport à une condition contrôle, les primo-donneurs·ses de la condition expérimentale « prévention » (i) ressentent moins d’anxiété et de peurs préalables au don, (ii) en raison notamment d’une plus forte capacité perçue à maîtriser le contexte de prélèvement et les peurs qui y sont associées, (iii) les conduisant, à l’issue du don, à indiquer moins de symptômes de MV, moins de douleur ressentie et davantage d’intention de redonner son sang. La discussion portera sur la modélisation des liens entre l’(in)tolérance à l’incontrôlabilité, l’état émotionnel préalable au don de sang et l’expérience de don subséquente.
Invitée par : Alexandre Heeren
Jeudi 16 mai 10h00
Salle D325
Les comportements suicidaires chez les enfants de 12 ans et moins : les pratiques de travailleuses sociales
Ariane Sisavath, Université du Québec en Outaouais
Les comportements suicidaires chez les enfants de 12 ans et moins semblent être en augmentation au Québec et le phénomène est bien présent ailleurs aussi (Burstein et al., 2019; CRISE, 2022; Lévesque et Perron, 2023; Lévesque et al., 2022). Chez ces enfants, le phénomène revêt de multiples facettes (Delamarre, 2013; Vandevoorde, 2015; Maltais et al., 2019) et demeure encore peu connu parmi la population générale et peu documenté dans la littérature scientifique. Cette communication vise à présenter les résultats d’une recherche qualitative réalisée dans le cadre la maîtrise en travail social portant sur les pratiques de travailleuses sociales œuvrant auprès de ces enfants dans une région périurbaine située au nord de Montréal, au Canada. Une discussion suivra pour discuter des ponts existants entre les contextes québécois et belge.
Invitée par : Magali Lahaye, Zoé Mallien, Isabelle Aujoulat (IRSS) et Anne-Catherine Dubois (IRSS)
Monday 13 May 4.00pm
Room: E241
Top-Down Racial Biases in Size Perception: A Registered Replication and Extension of Wilson et al. (2017)
Mayan Navon, Ben-Gurion University, Israel
Biases in the perception and judgment of members of race-based and ethnicity-based minority groups are prevalent, often resulting in detrimental outcomes for these individuals. One such bias is a threat-related stereotype, associating specific race and ethnicity-based social groups with aggressiveness, violence, and criminality. In the US context, Black men are often victims of such bias. Recent evidence suggests that threat-related stereotypes are also linked to biased perceptions, such that perceivers overestimate the body size of Black relative to White men, even in the absence of perceptual differences between them. That is, mere top-down social category information was sufficient to induce perceptual biases in size perception related to threat (Wilson et al., 2017, Study 7). Considering the novelty of this finding and its theoretical importance, we suggested a registered replication of this finding to assess its robustness across laboratories, participants, and social groups. We conducted a direct replication (Study 1, N = 280) of the effect reported by Wilson and colleagues, followed by a conceptual replication (Study 2, N = 280) that tests the generalization of the original findings to another population (Israeli residents) and a different target social group (Muslim Israelis) frequently stereotyped as threatening in this population. Participants did not overestimate the body size of Black or Muslim Israeli targets, pointing to a failed replication of the original effect. These findings suggest that evidence regarding purely top-down effects on perception and judgment are less robust than previously assumed.
Invited by: Olivier Corneille
Vendredi 3 mai de 11h00 à 12h30
Salle du conseil A224
Réformes curriculaires en RDC et défis des réalités locales
Pierre Mukendi Wa Mpoyi. Docteur en sciences pédagogiques de l’ULB, le professeur Pierre Mukendi Wa Mpoyi est professeur ordinaire à l’Université de Kinshasa à la Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l’éducation. Il mène ses recherches dans le domaine de la réforme de la formation de base des enseignants du primaire et s’est largement impliqué dans différentes commissions nationales, visant à réformer la formation initiale et continue des enseignants du primaire.
Résumé :
Des réformes curriculaires se multiplient dans le système éducatif de la RDC sans que les résultats observés ne donnent satisfaction. D’énormes moyens financiers sont en vain mobilisés, avec l’appui des organismes internationaux ayant une expertise avérée en la matière, et du soutien des partenaires techniques et financiers des pays amis, bien rodés dans le domaine des innovations pédagogiques. Des équipes d’experts nationaux/internationaux sont constituées et des services spécialisés du Ministère en charge de l’Education nationale mis à contribution, sans que les observateurs avisés ne perçoivent une lueur d’espoir d’amélioration. Qu’est-ce qui expliquerait ces échecs à répétition des innovations initiées dans un tel contexte d’accompagnement ?
Il s’impose une profonde réflexion pour identifier les probables causes endogènes et exogènes de cet état de choses, les défis à relever, et proposer des pistes de solutions qui tiennent compte des réalités locales, nationales, en vue d’élaborer des programmes scolaires et proposer des réformes curriculaires réellement profitables au pays.
Invité par : Mariane Frenay
Friday 3 May 11.00 am
Room: Auditoire Science 2
Alexithymia: Towards an Experimental, Processual Affective Science and Effective Interventions
Kristy Nielson, Department of Psychology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA; Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA
Alexithymia is a multi-dimensional personality trait involving difficulty identifying feelings (DIF), difficulty describing feelings (DDF), and an externally oriented thinking style (EOT). Poor fantasy life (PF) is debated as another facet. For over 50 years, the alexithymia literature has examined how alexithymia-related disturbances in perceiving and expressing feelings contribute to mental and physical disorders.
We review the current understanding of alexithymia, including its definition, etiology, measurement, vulnerabilities for both mental and physical illness, and treatment. We then focus on the importance of further experimental and processual affective science research that a) emphasizes facet-level analysis toward understanding the nuanced bases of alexithymia effects on neural, cognitive, and behavioral processes; b) distinguishes between emotion deficits and emotion over-responding, including when over-responding is functional; and c) clarifies when and how impairments occur for neutral and positively valenced information or contexts. Taken together, clarification of these issues will provide clear directions for effective, tailored, alexithymia interventions.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
Tuesday 30 april 3.30 pm
Room: E139
Mechanisms of Self-Regulation Failure: Studies of Cigarette Craving and Alcohol Intoxication
Kasey Creswell, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh USA
Self-regulation failure results when an individual is unable to override the usual consequences of an impulse. A broad range of societal (e.g., addiction, crime, teenage pregnancy) and personal (e.g., eating binges, shopping sprees, gambling) problems are a result of self-regulation failures. I will present a program of research that examines the mechanisms of self-regulation failure, using cigarette craving and alcohol intoxication as experimental models. I will begin my talk by briefly describing studies that use manipulations of cigarette cravings to reveal the underlying cognitive and affective mechanisms linking craving states to subsequent self-regulatory failures. The rest of my talk will center on my social-contextual theory of alcohol use disorder (AUD) risk, focusing on how alcohol consumption serves to regulate emotions (i.e., relief of negative affect and enhancement of positive affect) and social functioning. Specifically, I will present a series of studies on the unique antecedents and deleterious consequences of social compared with solitary alcohol use in adolescents and young adults. I will end by considering the conceptual, methodological, and clinical implications of this social-contextual account of AUD risk.
Invited by: Pierre Maurage, Arthur Pabst & LEP
Tuesday 30 April 1pm
Room: salle du conseil A224
What is ‘average’ anyway? Exploring the importance of individual differences in personality research
Joanne Sneddon, University of Western Australia
It is common in personality research to use mean centered methods of analysis. Yet, it is not always the case that variables relate in the same way at the mean as at other points along their distributions. As such, focusing only on the mean may hide the true nature of relations between variables of interest. One way of addressing this issue is to use techniques that can examine relations between variables at specific points of interest along their respective distributions. This seminar will focus on the use of quantile techniques in personality research, with a specific focus on personal values. We explore the importance of value importance with empirical examples using quantile regression and correlation techniques, showing that in many instances personal values relate to other variables differently depending on how important the value is to an individual. These findings help to shed light on previously weak to moderate relations between personal values and variables of interest found using mean centered approaches.
Invited by: Karl-Andrew Woltin
Monday 29 April -Two seminars:
The seminar is postponed!
Conceptualizing constructs: New and uncommon methods
David Grüning, Université Mannheim, Germany
The conceptualization of constructs has a long tradition in self-report research. Interestingly, the methods commonly used to theorize and test constructs are rather restrictive in at least three ways.
First, statistical modelling of construct factors is strongly focused on the idea that a latent factor is best represented by items that are highly similar to each other (i.e., items to which participants respond very similarly). However, similarity is only one of several criteria by which items can be clustered to represent a hypothesized factor (see e.g., increase in predictability or interindividual variance).
Second, the trend in construct modelling has mostly focused on confirmatory approaches. An extensive prior exploration of the factor structure can inform limitations of an assumed factor model. Third, confirmatory model testing is often applied in a narrow sense. That is, common applications of confirmatory model fit testing can be advanced in several informative ways. In the present talk, I aim to provide a compact overview of the landscape of exciting but more or less uncommon methods to address the three restrictions. These methods can substantially improve our understanding of the constructs we measure on a daily basis through self-report.
I illustrate each method with examples, mostly from personality and psychopathology research, and offer ideas for their application in other fields
Invited by: Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
- 9.15 am
Room: Socr 42
Navigating Pandemics and Political Polarization: Insights from COVID-19 and Brexit Studies
Michèle Birtel, University of Greenwich
Infectious diseases and polarized conflicts represent urgent global challenges necessitating effective action. Understanding the attitudinal and behavioral responses to health and political threats to society is key to improving future interventions. How can psychology contribute to enhancing societal responses and interventions? This presentation reports findings from multiple experimental, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies from countries across the world that examine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit. Our findings highlight the significance of national and moral identity, social norms, attitudes towards opposing groups, and endorsement of conspiracy theories in shaping how individuals navigate societal threats. They also show that positive contact may mitigate conflict and the negative effects of strained intergroup relations on wellbeing. Potential implications of these findings for managing future pandemics and political polarization are discussed, emphasizing the importance of considering intergroup dynamics when designing interventions aimed at promoting effective collective health behavior, reducing conflict, and improving health and wellbeing.
Invited by, Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
Lundi 29 avril, deux séminaires :
Salle du conseil A224
- à 15h15
Révision en temps réel de l'orthographe chez les enfants d'école primaire et de collège
Lucile Chanquoy, Université Côte d'Azur
Cette étude porte sur la détection et la correction en ligne d'erreurs d'orthographe lexicale et grammaticale par des élèves de l'enseignement primaire et secondaire. L'objectif était de déterminer, à partir de mesures chronologiques et de scores de révision, quelles erreurs posaient le plus de difficultés à ces participants et, d'un point de vue développemental, comment les corrections évoluaient avec le niveau scolaire. Cette étude était basée sur le postulat que le temps de révision devrait être un bon indicateur de la difficulté rencontrée par les participants pour détecter et corriger les erreurs orthographiques. Ainsi, non seulement les erreurs détectées et révisées ont été prises en compte, mais aussi le temps nécessaire aux élèves pour réviser chaque phrase en fonction de la nature de la correction. Même si nous avons recueilli toutes les configurations de révision, seules les phrases dont les erreurs ont été à la fois détectées et correctement corrigées sont prises en compte dans cet exposé. Globalement, de manière attendue, les enfants plus âgés ont détecté et corrigé plus d’erreurs et plus rapidement que les plus jeunes. De plus, les participants, quel que soit leur niveau scolaire, corrigent plus souvent les erreurs lexicales que grammaticales et prennent significativement moins de temps pour les corriger. Les différents types d’erreurs lexicales et grammaticales conduisent à d’importantes différences de révision.
- à 14h30
The APOMI model of word writing: Spelling retrieval as an anticipatory process
Sonia Kandel, Université Grenobles Alpes
Experimental digitizer data indicate that orthographic and motor processes interact during word writing. Spelling processes are active while we execute the movements to write the letters and spread throughout the production of the whole word. This “cascade” of orthographic activation over motor production processes challenged the traditional models of writing research and led to the elaboration of the APOMI theoretical framework. APOMI is a dual route architecture that differs from traditional dual models essentially by two assumptions on how and when the spelling processes cascade into motor production processes. The traditional models conceive orthographic representations as linear sequences of information on letter identity and order such that the word thinker is represented as T1H2I3N4K5E6R7. APOMI instead, supposes that orthographic retrieval processes begin with the activation of a multi-dimensional orthographic representation. The spelling retrieval process involves the simultaneous activation of three hierarchical dimensions: morphemes (THINK1ER2), syllables (THIN1KER2), and graphemes (TH1I2N3K4E5R6). This idea is based on data showing that children and adults write words by grouping the letters into chunks. This tendency to group small units into bigger chunks is a well-known phenomenon that is particularly efficient for the memorization of strings with several elements. Chunking strategies between the whole word and the letter optimize the retrieval of spelling in a coherent linguistic fashion and facilitate the programming of motor outputs. APOMI’s second assumption is that that these linguistic intermediate-grained units regulate the dynamics of motor processes. These letter chunks are activated very early in the writing process, generating the anticipation of spelling information to the peripheral levels. For example, chunks THINK1, THIN1, TH1 will be inputs to the lower processing levels as soon as each chunk is activated. Morpheme, syllable and grapheme units remain active -i.e., they are kept in working memory- until we finish writing the last letter of the chunk. The consequence is that while we are executing the movements to produce the initial letters of the word (e.g., THI), the spelling system is also processing orthographic information on the letters of the last part of the word (ER2, KER2, K4E5R6). Therefore, the interaction between spelling and motor processing can be conceived as the outcome of a series of anticipatory mechanisms.
Invitées par: Marie Van Reybroeck, Elise Blampain
Tuesday 23 April 2.00 pm
Room: E241
Loneliness as an Emotional Disorder: Bridging Affective and Clinical Science
David Preece, Curtin University and University of Western Australia (Perth, Australia)
Loneliness is a significant and growing public health issue, which is a key risk factor for a variety of mental and physical health issues across the lifespan. To date, loneliness treatments have had relatively low effectiveness, emphasizing the pressing need for more work in this area. In this presentation, Dr Preece will outline recent theoretical advances from his lab on the understanding of loneliness, harnessing insights from the affective science field to conceptualize loneliness as an emotional disorder. He will present recent data illustrating how emotion regulation patterns can explain substantial variance in loneliness levels, and will detail the unique emotion regulation profiles underpinning loneliness. Dr Preece will discuss how these insights can inform more comprehensive and targeted treatments for loneliness.
Invited by, Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
Wednesday 17 april 4.15pm
Room: Salle du conseil A224
Emotion Regulation: Advances in Theory, Assessment, and Clinical Treatment
David Preece, Curtin University and University of Western Australia (Perth, Australia)
Emotions are central to daily life and issues with emotion underpin many different psychiatric disorders. This means that emotion regulation is a key area of study for clinical research and practice. In this presentation, Dr Preece will summarize recent advances in the emotion regulation field with respect to theory, assessment, and treatment. He will detail his recent work developing new psychometric measures of emotion regulation, and will illustrate the importance of considering emotion regulation problems across both negative and positive emotions. Dr Preece will discuss how different profiles of emotion regulation can underpin different psychopathologies and, in the tradition of precision psychiatry, how this can inform more targeted transdiagnostic treatments for emotional disorders.
Invited by, Olivier Luminet and Illuminetti lab
Friday 5 April from 10.30 a.m.
Room: E139 or follow the presentation on Teams
Eating behavior in obesity and obesity surgery: the weight of interoceptive sensibility
Vrutti Joshi, Université de Nîmes
Obesity presents a significant global health concern, with research indicating a reciprocal relationship between obesity and mental health issues, influenced by eating behaviors. Interoception plays a crucial role, as its dysregulation correlates with obesity and problematic eating patterns, hindering weight management even post-bariatric surgery. Interestingly, adaptive intuitive eating is strongly associated to low BMI, psychological well-being and interoception. Our work aimed to explore how interoceptive sensibility affects both maladaptive and adaptive eating behaviors within the context of obesity and bariatric surgery. Our findings supported the importance of understanding and utilizing internal sensations, especially related to food, in regulating eating behaviors. We advocate for further research on subjective interoceptive dimensions and promote the development of interoceptive sensibility and intuitive eating as therapeutic approaches for managing eating behavior, regardless of weight or treatment choice.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet, Marine Mas
Jeudi 28 mars de 14h à 15h30
Salle du conseil A224
Prendre en compte les compétences non académiques des élèves et étudiants : quels intérêts et difficultés pour le chercheur en éducation ?
Sophie Morlaix, Université de Bourgogne
Le concept de compétences non académiques est difficile à définir, difficile à mesurer tant ses definitions peuvent être diverses et ses mesures variées. Pour autant, l’intêret de sa prise en compte dans les domaines de l’education et de la formation ne fait plus de doutes.
Les effets de ces compétences non académiques sur les parcours scolaires/universitaires et professionnels sont prouvés. Elles favorisent d’une part l’acquisition de compétences académiques,
qui définissent les situations de réussite et d’échec, et permettent de comprendre des inégalites de réussite entre élèves. De la même facon, sur le marche du travail, elles permettent aux individus de se démarquer et semblent liées notamment à une valorisation salariale.
C’est pourquoi les avancées de la recherche sur les effets de ces compétences apparaissent primordiales pour saisir les processus à l’oeuvre dans les différentes étapes et les choix de parcours scolaires et professionnels.
Invitée par : Mariane Frenay
Wednesday 27 March -Two seminars:
- 9am
Room: Salle du conseil A224
Explaining Health Behavior Disparities: A Proposed Mechanistic Model
Martin S. Hagger, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of California, Merced, US
A principal reason cited for inequity in health outcomes is the observed disparities in health behavior participation in underserved communities. We propose a model based in social cognition theories that offers a psychological explanation for these disparities. We contend that effects of socio-structural variables indicating disparity (e.g., income, socio-economic status, education level) on health behavior are attributable to variation in theory constructs (e.g., attitudes, risk perceptions) such that the constructs mediate socio-structural variable effects on health intentions and behavior. As an illustration, a mediated effect of education level on health behavior by attitude and risk perceptions suggests that inaction among individuals with lower education may be due to their insufficient knowledge of the health-behavior link. We report data from multiple primary and meta-analytic studies in multiple populations, behaviors, and socio-structural variables in support of our model. Potential avenues for future research and intervention based on the model are proposed.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet (Illuminetti lab and post-covid Belspo project THRIVE)
- 11am
Room: Salle du conseil A224
COVID-19 Vaccination: Prediction, Measurement, and Moving Forward
Kyra Hamilton, School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University, Australia
Strategies for long-term management of COVID-19 infections suggests achieving broad immunity through vaccination, and evidence that vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time points to the need for COVID-19 booster vaccines. It is therefore important to identify the beliefs and concerns associated with booster vaccines and using comprehensive measures to examine the issues. Further, persuasive messaging promoting COVID-19 vaccination has been a central strategy of health agencies to ensure control of infection rates and to curtail outbreaks. Thus, it is important to reflect on messaging to examine the cultural appropriateness of messages used to promote COVID-19 vaccination and the adoption of culturally relevant salient beliefs embedded within. This presentation will showcase studies with data collected across Australia and USA providing evidence for the proposed mechanisms by which socio cognition variables relate to booster vaccination intentions and proposes ways to move the field forward to ensure the subsequent development of culturally appropriate and tailored messaging.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet (Illuminetti lab and post-covid Belspo project THRIVE)
Lundi 18 mars de 14h00 à 15h30
Auditoire LECL 73
Psychologie des classes sociales : un projet de réplication à grande échelle
Frédérique Autin, Université de Poitiers
Des modèles théoriques en psychologie ont été développé pour comprendre comment la classe sociale façonne certaines façons de penser, de ressentir, et d’agir (Batruch, Sommet, & Autin, 2023 ; Goudeau, Autin, & Croizet, 2017). Les expériences répétées des individus des classes sociales populaires, dans des contextes plutôt instables et contraignants, façonneraient une tendance à être orienté vers autrui et l’environnement (e.g., sensibilité aux influences extérieures, soi interdépendant, connecté à autrui, ajustement à autrui et l’environnement). En revanche, l’expérience des individus de classes sociales favorisées, dans des contextes plus stables et peu contraignants, développerait des tendances psychologiques orientées vers le soi (e.g., centration sur ses états internes, soi indépendant, unique, influence sur l’environnement). Les bases empiriques des modèles de la psychologie des classes sociales ne sont pas exemptes des faiblesses soulignées par la crise de la réplication, notamment des échantillons petits, non représentatifs et une flexibilité dans les outils de mesures. Pour répondre à ces limites, nous répliquons 33 hypothèses centrales renvoyant à l’influence de la classe sociale sur le soi, les relations sociales, les émotions, la cognition, la prise de décision et les comportements. L'étude de réplication est menée auprès de 4 échantillons représentatifs de 9'000 personnes en France, Suisse, Inde et aux États-Unis.
Invitée par Vincent Yzerbyt (au nom du SocLab)
Monday 19 February 10.45 !Cancelled!
Interoception: measurement and individual differences
Jenny Murphy, Royal Holloway University of London
There is increasing interest in the role of interoception, the perception of the body’s internal state, for mental and physical health. Such interest, however, has been paralleled by discussion regarding the measurement and conceptualisation of interoception. In this talk I will provide an overview of some of the difficulties associated with the measurement of interoception and introduce some novel measures of interoceptive ability. In the latter part of the talk, I will outline how we might use these novel measures to understand the relevance of interoceptive ability for emotional ability and mental health.
Invited by: Pierre Philippot
Thursday 15 February - 12h30
Room: Salle du conseil A224
Understanding Inequality as Privilege Versus Disadvantage: Patterns, Reasons, Consequences, and a Call for Better Theory
Susanne Bruckmüller, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg
Inequality between social groups is one of the most pressing issues of our time. It is also a traditional topic of social psychology. Inequality usually encompasses (at least) one group that is better off, advantaged, and/or privileged and (at least) one other group that is worse off, discriminated against, and/or disadvantaged. Accordingly, communication about, as well as research on, inequality can focus on disadvantages (e.g., the poor having less) and disadvantaging mechanisms such as discrimination or on privileges (e.g., the rich having more) and advantaging mechanism such as favoritism. In this talk, I will first show that public discourse and scientific work pay much more attention to disadvantages and discrimination than to advantages and privilege, even though there are some systematic exceptions. I will then show a few examples illustrating that framing inequality as advantage versus disadvantage can be very consequential and present a systematic review showing that even though research on these consequences has grown exponentially in recent years, it is rather fragmented, inconsistent, and lacks theoretical integration. I will end with some suggestions for key elements in a unifying theory of inequality framing and a discussion of implications for (psychological) research on inequality more generally.
Invited by: Karl-Andrew Woltin
Thursday 8 February 2:30pm - 4:30 pm
Room E241
Spatial concepts across axes, ages, and cultures
Benjamin Pitt, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Toulouse School of Economics
From early in life, people use space to structure their mental representations of abstract domains like time and number. In this talk, I address the structure and origins of our spatial concepts, in two parts. In the first part, I show evidence from indigenous Tsimane' adults and US children that cross-domain mappings like the mental timeline and mental number line do not have an innate directional bias (e.g. left-to-right), contra claims from animal and infant studies. Rather, in the absence of strong cultural conventions that spatialize time or number in a specific direction (like reading and math), these mappings appear to be omni-directional by default, perhaps as a reflection of the natural world. In the second part, I examine people's representations of space itself, which also vary across ages and cultures. When remembering how objects are arranged, some people typically use egocentric space, defined by the sides of the body (e.g. to the right), whereas others tend to use allocentric space, defined by features of the environment (e.g. toward the coast). A series of cross-cultural and developmental studies suggest that this fundamental difference in spatial representation may be determined in part by differences in people's ability to make left-right spatial discriminations, a culture-specific perceptual skill that must be learned. Together, these findings help to clarify the causes of spatial cognitive diversity across axes, ages, and cultures.
Invited by: Olivier Collignon, Ying Yang (CPP Lab)
Mercredi 7 février 15h00
Salle du conseil A224
Drunkorexie chez les étudiants : dimensions psychologiques, profil cognitif et prédicteurs de l’évolution des comportements à un an
Ludivine Ritz, Université de Caen
La drunkorexie, associant usage problématique d’alcool et conduites alimentaires désordonnées, a été majoritairement décrite chez les étudiants consommateurs d’alcool, pouvant concerner 50% d’entre eux. A ce jour, peu d’études se sont intéressées aux dimensions psychologiques (notamment la relation d’attachement et l’histoire de maltraitance) et aux profil cognitif des étudiants drunkorexiques. L’évolution de la drunkorexie et des variables qui y sont liées (consommation d’alcool et conduites alimentaires problématiques) au cours du suivi longitudinal n’a par ailleurs jamais été investiguée. Les résultats préliminaires de ces différentes études menées chez les étudiants Unicaen vous seront présentés et discutés.
Invitée par : Pierre Maurage & LEP
Tuesday 23 January 3pm
Room: salle du conseil A224
Cognitive processess in Addiction: From Brain to everyday life
Valentine Chirokoff, Université de Bordeaux
My thesis employed Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) by smartphones to provide repeated assessments of inhibition functioning, craving, and substance use in patients with different forms of substance addiction (alcohol, nicotine, cannabis) and healthy controls. In addition to daily life assessments we collected resting state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data. We examined the influence of momentary fluctuations of inhibition, craving dynamic, and their interplay, on substance use in the following hours. We then determined the impact of brain anatomofunctional connectivity in such prediction. We highlighted brain networks linked to everyday craving fluctuations, inhibitions functioning and acting as prognostic factors of use in real life.
Invited by: Pierre Maurage & LEP
Wednesday 17 january 10:45 - 11h45
Room: salle du conseil A224 or on Teams
Cognitive and Behavioral processes involved in the onset and maintenance of dissociation: Empirical evidence, theorical conceptualization and psychotherapeutic intervention.
Alexis Vancappel, Université de Tours-C.H.R.U. de Tours
Dissociation can be defined as a disruption of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity, and affect (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, numbing, amnesia, and analgesia). Dissociation is a widespread phenomenon, especially among patients suffering from PostTraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
During the past few years, our research team conducted multiple studies and experiments (qualitative and quantitative) to develop a cognitive behavioral conceptualization of dissociation. This conceptualization proposes five mechanisms involved in the maintenance of dissociative symptoms: 1) negative beliefs about emotion, 2) positive and negative beliefs about dissociation, 3) emotion regulation difficulties, 4) disrupted attention abilities and 5) low mindfulness abilities. Based on this conceptualization, we developed a CBT program to treat dissociative symptoms, named dissociation focus CBT (DF-CBT). We performed an exploratory open trial among 27 patients suffering from dissociative symptoms to assess the efficacy of such program. The first results indicate a significant reduction of dissociative symptoms after the program.
During this presentation, we will describe the CBT model, empirical data that support it and the details of the clinical trial. The model and the content of the therapeutic program will be illustrated with clinical examples.
Invited by: Céline Douilliez & Pierre Philippot
2023
Tuesday 19 December 10h30
Room: Salle du Conseil A224
Having a nose for seeing: Odor-driven visual categorization in the developing human brain
Arnaud Leleu, Center for Taste, Smell and Feeding Sciences, Université de Bourgogne
While human vision is poor at the beginning of life, infants must rapidly acquire the ability to organize visual inputs into discrete categories. How this key function – visual categorization – emerges and develops in the human brain remains poorly understood. In this talk, I will address this issue through a series of experiments using scalp electroencephalography (EEG) and a frequency-tagging approach. I will demonstrate that the categorical responsiveness of the immature infant visual system is shaped by inputs from a more developed, but generally neglected, sensory modality, i.e., smell. In particular, I will show that one of the most relevant odors for young infants, the mother’s body odor, enhances face-selective neural activity over the right occipital cortex at 4 months, this effect being absent for nonface objects, except for objects that can be perceived as faces (face pareidolia). I will also illustrate that the facilitating effect of maternal odor declines gradually between 4 and 12 months as face categorization develops and improves. Similarly, I will reveal that the odor effect fades at 4 months when face categorization is less demanding. Lastly, I will document how odors still influence visual categorization in adults when inputs are ambiguous and difficult to categorize, and how this effect relates to perceptual awareness. Altogether, these findings will disclose how the sense of smell drives category-selective activity in the visual system as an inverse function of its effectiveness, this cooperation remaining effective until adulthood. This body of research will endorse the view that the human brain builds upon multisensory experience for category acquisition, relying on the ordered development across the senses.
Invited by, Olivier Collignon, Roberta Calce
Mardi 12 décembre 10h00
Salle : C206-208
Apprendre et enseigner dans des contextes favorables à l’apprentissage : bilan et perspectives
Denis Bédard, Ph.D. U. de Sherbrooke
Dans le cadre de ce séminaire, je ferai le bilan de 30 années de recherche au sujet de l’acte d’apprendre et de celui d’enseigner en enseignement supérieur. Pour ce faire, je prendrai appui sur mon parcours de chercheur, mais aussi de directeur de centres de recherche, de praticien, de conseiller pédagogique et d’expert. Orientés par les grandes questions de recherche qui ont jalonné ce parcours et la littérature scientifique qui l’a soutenue, différents thèmes seront abordés : l’apprentissage et l’enseignement contextualisés authentiques (AECA), l’apprentissage par problèmes (APPb) et l’approche par projets (APPj), le transfert des acquis, l’innovation pédagogique et curriculaire, la formation pédagogique et l’hybridation de la formation. De plus, je mettrai en relief les certaines caractéristiques des domaines d’étude, des types d’établissements et des pays où ont été réalisées ces activités. Enfin, après ce bilan, je présenterai quelques perspectives de recherche et d’innovations qui m’apparaissent prometteuses et susceptibles de continuer à soutenir l’apprentissage et les personnes étudiantes en enseignement supérieur.
Invité par : Mariane Frenay,
Thursday 30 November (cancelled)
Methods in argumentation research - Quantifying qualities
Freydis Vogel, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Education
Argumentative discourse is attributed various benefits in learning and problem solving. From the perspective of developing social competencies, argumentation skills are relevant to many domains and situations, particularly in collaborative problem solving. Beyond that, engagement in argumentative discourse is related to cognitive elaboration which leads to improved learning outcomes. Thus, both learning to argue and arguing to learn are important facets of education and learning. For the evaluation and assessment of argumentative discourse a diverse array of methods are applied, based on various approaches to argumentation (e.g. Toulmin`s argument model or Walton’s types of argumentation dialogue) and trying to overcome different complications (e.g. the dependency of individual contributions in one group). In the announced seminar, you will be introduced to different approaches related to argumentation in learning. We will discuss benefits and drawbacks of different methods for assessment of argumentation and we will apply mixed methods approaches to evaluate argumentative discourse in learning research.
Invited by: Mariane Frenay, Valérie Swaen, Magali Paquot, François Lambotte (projet ARC MOOCResearch 2.0)
Wednesday 29 November 14h00
Room C206
Cultural shaping of emotions: In the head and in the world
Yulia Chentsova, Department of Psychology, Georgetown University (Washington DC)
Cultural psychology conceptualizes emotions as emergent properties of biological, psychological and cultural factors, with mechanisms that boost emotional heterogeneity at each of these levels as well as those that constrain it. In our work, my colleagues and I examine different ways in which cultures shape emotions. Some of our work concerns aspects of culture that are "in the head" (including beliefs about emotions and emotional norms) and some that are "in the world" (including cultural products, such as children's books and newspaper articles and culturally-shaped daily life events that trigger affective responses). In this talk, I will describe this work and its overarching concerns with cultural shaping of salience of emotion to the local theories of mind and selfhood and discuss implications for assessing emotions in healthy and clinical samples in culturally-embedded ways.
Invited by Olivier Luminet et Illuminetti Lab
Wednesday 15 November 12h45
Room: Salle du conseil A224
Brain-body interactions in persistent somatic symptoms
Omer Van den Bergh, KULeuven
This talk will take you on an experimental journey in which somatic sensations are induced and their correspondence with self-reported symptoms is systematically investigated in order to reveal when and why bodily symptoms may or may not be closely related to input from somatic dysfunction. This journey prompts a new model to understand the experience of a bodily symptom as the result of a dynamic constructive perceptual process balancing afferent peripheral input and perceptual hypotheses generated by the brain. Personal characteristics, contextual variables and their interaction may cause different degrees of dissociations between bodily symptoms and physiological dysfunction. Our view suggests that interoceptive differentiation training may be an important target for therapeutic intervention.
Invited by: Pierre Philippot & the Laboratory for Experimental Psychopathology
Friday 10 November 12h45 - 14h (new timetable)
Room: Socr -242
>>The seminar will be preceded by a buffet lunch starting at 12.15pm in the corridor in front of room SOCR -242<<
Intergenerational transmission of trauma
Katarina Kompan, Université de Llubljana (Slovénie)
The talk will explore the theoretical and clinical aspects of different mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of individual and historical trauma in the family system. Within the family history of unresolved trauma, young generations are unconsciously drawn into the emotional reality of previous generations. They not only lack the basic understanding of their own emotional reactions, relationship patterns and cognitive biases, they also fall prey to parentification and thus cannot fulfill their creative potential and flourish in life. This limited potential often goes hand in hand with the emotional dynamics on collective levels. In many societies, people are kept in fear and submission and learn to hide their initiative and spontaneity. Families that remain trapped in wartime and postwar traumas due to nonfunctional coping strategies of the parents (addiction, domestic violence, and emotional numbness) fail to allow children and grandchildren to develop more flexible emotionality and more functional and appropriate contact with the world. The third generation of children was set free only in those families in which the wartime children as adults managed to talk about their traumatic experience and emotionally process their pain, thereby offering their offspring more compassionate parenting and providing them with greater emotional flexibility. Through the study of three Slovenian families, different paths of this transmission will be illustrated.
Invited by: Jochem Willemsen et Emmanuelle Zech en collaboration avec les CPS
Monday 6 November 14h - 15h30
Room E241
Covid-19 threat, attitudes and behaviors of adjustment, and the role of religiosity and spirituality
Jaroslaw Piotrowski, Institute of Psychology, Card. S Wyszynski University in Warsaw
People's religiosity and spirituality played an important role during COVID-19 pandemic. These constructs influenced cognition, attitudes, and behaviors of people in their response to this threat. On the basis of data collected from a Polish representative sample, associations between religiosity, spirituality, and pandemic-related perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors were analyzed. Religiosity was associated with lower knowledge about coronavirus, and with stronger belief in coronavirus-related fake news. Spirituality, on the other hand, was associated with higher knowledge and lower belief in fake news. Both numinous constructs were associated with higher perception of Covid-related threat. Spirituality was also associated positively, and religiosity negatively, with beliefs about effectiveness of preventive behaviors. People with higher levels of religiosity were more likely to engage in helping others and in hoarding behaviors, and people with higher levels of spirituality were more likely to engage in helping others and preventive behaviors. Taken together, these results suggest that religiosity was associated with more problematic adjustment, and spirituality with better adjustment to the pandemic.
Invited by: Vassilis Saroglou and the Center for psychology of religion
Monday 6 November 11h - 12h30
Room E241
Circumplex Model of Narcissism: Implications for Social and Personality Psychology
Prof. Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska, Institute of Psychology, Card. S Wyszynski University in Warsaw
Circumplex Model of Narcissism is a newly developed integrative model aimed at explaining the structure of narcissistic personality. Based on circumplex models known from personality (that is, personality metatraits) and social (that is, interpersonal circumplex) psychology, this model proposes describing narcissism as a constellation of eight traits organized in two axes: passivity-agency and antagonism-communion. These eight traits (and associated strategies enhancing and protecting self) refer to existing models of narcissism: Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept, Agentic-Communal Model of Narcissism, Vulnerable Isolation and Enmity Concept, and the Narcissistic Spectrum Model. We would like to present theoretical assumptions, psychometrics, self-reported, observation and experimental data supporting the CMN, with a special focus on emotional regulation, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal relations. The CMN seems to be a promising framework in explaining many social phenomena, like prosociality, religiosity, responses to COVID-19 or attitudes regarding war.
Invited by: Vassilis Saroglou and the Center for psychology of religion
Monday 9th October 10am
Room: E139
New Insights into Social Alignment and Neural Synchronization
Hila Gvirts, Ariel University (Israël) - Dept. of Behavioral Sciences & Psychology
The talk will explore the neurocognitive mechanisms governing social affiliation, emphasizing synchrony as motor and cognitive alignment. Our research indicates shared neural mechanisms and predictive coding principles in various forms of social alignment. Utilizing fNIRS hyperscanning and deep motor alignment investigations, discussions will center on inter-brain synchronization's role in fostering closeness and behavioral synchronization, even in inter-group conflict scenarios. Additionally, exploration will extend to motor alignment challenges in autism and ADHD, shedding light on their social cognition struggles.
Furthermore, a novel hypothesis implicating dopamine in both motor function and cognitive alignment will be presented, underscoring the intrinsic interplay between these processes. By emphasizing social alignment and neural synchronization, this talk provides unique insights into the intricate processes underlying human sociality. Ultimately, this research advances our understanding of social cognition and its neural underpinnings, particularly relevant to psychiatric conditions.
Invited by: Illuminetti lab
Mardi 3 octobre 12h45
Salle Socr 43
Comment décrire et document les impacts fonctionnels en contexte de trouble développemental du langage (TDL) : quelques expériences récentes
Chantal Desmarais, Université Laval
Depuis le consensus Catalise (Bishop et al., 2016 et 2017), un critère important pour conclure à la présence d’un trouble développemental du langage (TDL) est la présence d’impacts fonctionnels. Or, la notion d’impacts fonctionnels n’a pas été clairement définie dans la recherche portant sur le TDL. En outre, peu d’outils offrent une procédure standardisée pour documenter les impacts fonctionnels du TDL chez les enfants. Quatre éléments principaux seront abordés pendant la conférence : (1) Les résultats d’une recension des écrits qui apportent un éclairage sur la conceptualisation des impacts fonctionnels; (2) l’élaboration et la validation des outils QLIF (QLIF 3-6 et QLIF 6-12) ayant pour but de documenter les impacts fonctionnels auprès d’enfants qui ont des difficultés ou un trouble de langage; (3) l’utilisation du QLIF 3-6 dans un centre de réadaptation au Québec et (4) l’expérimentation du QLIF 3-6 dans un contexte d’interculturalité en France.
Invitée Par Marie Pascale Noel et Elise Brassart
Thursday 28 September - 9am
Room: salle du conseil (A224)
Collaborative learning for virtual higher education: From face-to-face CSCL to collaborative MOOCs
Miguel Angel Herrera Pavo, Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar
Collaborative learning has great potential in the field of higher education because it promotes the joint construction of knowledge, as well as the development of skills related to the interaction that results in more essential learning processes. Based on a conceptual review of this type of learning, this seminar will explore, from concrete experiences, how a pedagogical model for virtual higher education can integrate it, and what its implications are. The seminar will highlight the relevance of careful planning, an adequate dynamic to form collaborative groups, the relevance of student practices related to everyday use of technologies, the change of the teaching role, and autonomy in the management of learning.
Invited by: Mariane Frenay, Magali Paquot (coord. ARC MoocResearch2.0), Valérie Swaen et François Lambotte - promoteurs ARC Mooc
Monday 25th September - 4:30 pm
Room: Socr 27
Inter-generational transmission of collective memory of the 1948 War events among Palestinian citizens of Israel
Eman Abu-Hanna Nahhas, Oranim Academic College and Teaching (Israël)
The Arab-Israeli conflict has been the subject of interest in numerous scholarly research. However, one area that has been understudied is how Palestinian citizens of Israel maintain their collective memory of the 1948 War events. The main purpose of the lecture is to share the results of a study that investigated the role of the Palestinian family as a mnemonic socializing agent in preserving and transmitting the collective memory of the 1948 War events from the so-called Nakba generation to other generations of internally displaced and non-displaced Palestinians. The study sought to answer two major questions:
1. What is the nature of the narrative of each of the investigated generations (those who experienced the traumatic events of 1948, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren) concerning the 1948 War events?
2. What are the differences in the narratives between internally displaced and non-displaced Palestinians?
The study was guided by a phenomenological perspective in which the mode of inquiry used was qualitative and interpretive, which included in-depth interviews with open-ended questions.
The sample of the interviewees included twenty-one Palestinian families, ten of whom were internally displaced.
In general, the analysis of the interviews revealed that despite the Israeli monitoring of the Palestinian counter-narrative regarding the 1948 War events, it continues to be represented and communicated at a grassroots level across the different generations of Palestinians. The findings revealed that besides having one unifying trans-generational popular collective memory narrated by all generations, each generation selected certain contents to remember, forming a “unique portrait” for it.
Invited by: Olivier Luminet & ARC Re-Member
Mercredi 12 juillet à 14h00
Salle E241
Trois conférencier.e.s invité.e.s présenteront leurs recherches et centres d’intérêt dans le cadre d’une collaboration internationale sur l’étude de l’impact des rites funéraires sur les processus de deuil.
Étudier le deuil dans l’interdisciplinarité et la sollicitude : le cadre de l’interprofessional empathy
Pr Jacques Cherblanc, Université du Québec en Outaouais
La mort d’une personne significative, que celle-ci soit attendue ou soudaine, peut constituer une crise importante pour les personnes endeuillées et avoir diverses répercussions dans leur vie personnelle, spirituelle, familiale, sociale et professionnelle. C’est la raison pour laquelle le deuil est un sujet de recherche multidimensionnel très complexe qui revêt plusieurs enjeux pour les chercheurs et chercheuses, tant au plan méthodologique qu’éthique. Comment arriver à mieux comprendre cette expérience, dans ses dimensions individuelles et sociales et sa complexité, tout en respectant et protégeant les personnes en situation de vulnérabilité qui participent à des études sur le deuil? De même, comment peut-on permettre aux équipes de recherche qui travaillent sur cette question de se sentir soutenues et même épanouies, face à une confrontation régulière à la mort et à la souffrance d’autrui? Quelle méthodologie de recherche semble la plus appropriée pour faire avancer les connaissances tout en manifestant une compassion réelle pour soi et pour les autres? Dans le cadre d’une étude mixte longitudinale intitulée Covideuil-Canada (Cherblanc et al. 2022), notre équipe, composée de chercheuses et de chercheurs provenant de diverses disciplines et universités, tant québécoises qu’européennes, a pu constater les bienfaits d’une nouvelle approche de collaboration interdisciplinaire – l’interprofessional empathy (Adamson et al., 2018). Appliquée à la recherche scientifique, cette approche a pour but de mettre en place divers moyens pour respecter le vécu des personnes interviewées ainsi que leur évolution et leur processus de guérison.
À partir de cette expérience de collaboration, cette communication souhaite donc présenter ce nouveau cadre de pratique de recherche et d’intervention interdisciplinaire émergeant et jeter un éclairage sur les défis, les écueils et les avantages d’une telle approche qui s’inscrit dans l’éthique du care (Gilligan, 1982), pour étudier le deuil. À partir des quatre étapes de l’interprofessionnal empathy, un regard critique sera posé sur les processus mis en place au sein de l’étude Covideuil-Québec en soutien aux personnes endeuillées et aux équipes de recherche impliquées.
Bio : Jacques Cherblanc, Ph.D., est professeur titulaire au Département des sciences humaines et sociales et directeur de l’Unité d’enseignement en études religieuses, en éthique et en philosophie de l’UQAC. Il est directeur du Laboratoire d’expertise et de recherche en anthropologie rituelle et symbolique (LERARS). Il mène actuellement un important projet de recherche visant à étudier les trajectoires de deuil en temps de pandémie (COVIDEUIL) et collabore à d’autres études, notamment sur la santé mentale des étudiants universitaires ainsi sur que les approches orientées vers la mise en sens en oncopédiatrie.
Santé mentale des populations universitaires : un Laboratoire-Vivant au service de la communauté.
Pr Christiane Bergeron-Leclerc, Université du Québec en Outaouais
La santé mentale des étudiant.es et des employé.es universitaires a été fragilisée dans le contexte de la pandémie. À ce sujet, plusieurs témoignages d’étudiant.es, de professeur.es et de professionnel.es ayant fait les manchettes au cours des deux dernières années ont alerté sur l’accroissement de leur charge de travail, de leur niveau de stress, voire d’épuisement ou de détresse (Nadeau, 2020, Pelletier, 2020). Bien que les étudiant·es universitaires aient été plus fragilisé·es, les résultats de nos travaux démontrent également que la santé mentale des employé·es a été impactée par la pandémie (Aristovnik et al., 2020; Bergeron-Leclerc et al., 2021). Les milieux universitaires sont souvent reconnus pour leur culture d’innovation; même si des enjeux profonds de santé mentale sont toujours d’actualité, des ressources existent afin d’en amoindrir les effets et d’autres peuvent être mises en place. C’est dans cette perspective qu’a été mis en place, en 2021, un projet de Laboratoire-Vivant dédié à la santé mentale, à l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) (Tremblay, Bergeron-Leclerc et al., 2022). Cette communication présentera le modèle du Laboratoire-Vivant et mettra en évidence les résultats émergeant de cette démarche de mobilisation individuelle et collective à laquelle ont participé plus de 1000 personnes. Plus spécifiquement, elle mettra en évidence : 1) les principaux enjeux de santé mentale des étudiant·es et des employé·es de l’UQAC en contexte pandémique, 2) l’inventaire des mesures de soutien à la santé mises à la disposition des étudiant·es et des employé·es de l’UQAC, 3) les nouvelles solutions identifiées afin de favoriser la santé mentale de l’ensemble de la communauté et 4) les stratégies déployées jusqu’à présent en réponse aux besoins identifiés par la communauté.
Bio :
Christiane Bergeron-Leclerc, Ph.D., est professeure agrégée au Département des sciences humaines et sociales de l’UQAC. Travailleuse sociale de formation, elle a œuvré au sein d’un hôpital psychiatrique, faisant de la « santé mentale » son champ de prédilection. En continuité avec son parcours clinique, elle s’intéresse en tant que chercheure, aux pratiques psychosociales (ou complémentaires à l’intervention) qui s’inscrivent en soutien au processus de rétablissement de la santé mentale des individus et des collectivités.
Deuils non autorisés et processsus de perte pendant la pandémie du COVID-19 en Espagne
Manuel Fernandez-Alcantara, Université d'Alicante
L’exposé fera le tour de la ligne de recherche "Évaluation et intervention dans les processus de deuil en fin de vie" développée dans le groupe de recherche “PATH - Aspects psychosociaux et transculturels de la santé et de la maladie”. Nous passerons en revue certains des résultats dans les populations de deuil non autorisé (disenfranchised): les soignants de personnes atteintes de démence, les proches et personnes porteuses de diagnostic de déficience mentale et les recherches dans le domaine du deuil périnatal. Enfin, nous présenterons les résultats préliminaires, qualitatifs et quantitatifs, du projet de recherche CO-GRIEF qui est mené après la pandémie de COVID-19 en Espagne.
Bio :
Coordinator of the Master in Active Aging and Health (University of Alicante). Doctor of Psychology from the University of Granada. General health psychologist specializing in palliative care and psycho-oncology. Member of the research group Psychology Applied to Health and Human Behavior (PSYBHE) of the University of Alicante, and the research group Psychosocial and Transcultural Aspects of Health and Disease (PATH) of the University of Granada. His main lines of research are complicated bereavement and the evaluation and intervention processes in loss and end of life, child neurodevelopment and the adaptation of evaluation instruments in chronic processes.
Invités par : Emmanuelle Zech, Camille Boever et Jochem Willemsen, Person-centred training and research lab, PCLab/Psychotherapy Group
Friday 30 June
Room: salle du conseil A224
Two seminars:
- 10:30 am
La dynamique de la production de textes : l’analyse des périodes d’exécution (présentation en français)
Thierry Olive, Université de Poitiers
Si l’analyse des pauses de production a permis de mieux comprendre la dynamique de la production écrite, plus récemment, l’étude des périodes d’exécution a ouvert de nouvelles fenêtres sur le fonctionnement cognitif des rédacteurs, et en particulier sur la façon dont ils coordonnent les multiples processus engagés lors de la rédaction de texte. Dans cette conférence, je ferai, dans un premier temps, un bilan rapide des travaux sur les périodes d’exécution puis, dans un second temps, je présenterai des travaux récents qui ont analysé l’effet de variations des demandes cognitives de la rédaction sur la dynamique de la production écrite.
Bio : Thierry Olive est chercheur en psychologie au CNRS. Ses recherches portent sur l'écriture et son apprentissage chez les enfants au développement normal et chez les écrivains ayant des difficultés de langage ou d'apprentissage. Il a publié de nombreux articles sur la rédaction de textes et la prise de notes, dans lesquels il étudie les processus cognitifs, les compétences orthographiques, l'implication de la mémoire de travail, le rôle des outils numériques, etc. Il est co-éditeur de la collection Studies in Writing publiée par Brill, du Journal of Writing Research, et il est directeur de la Maison de Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société de Poitiers.
- 11h:15 am
Enhancing writing and executive functions with mindfulness-based interventions, University of Porto (presentation in English)
Teresa Limpo, University of Porto
Among the many processes involved in writing, the role of executive functions including attention as received scant research attention in child studies. Yet, given the complexity of writing, proficiency in this task seems to be heavily dependent on these cognitive abilities. Recently, more and more research has been showing the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions using meditation techniques to improve children’s executive function in general and attention in particular, which seems to manifest in better school performance. Grounded on this evidence, we conducted a set of studies in which we either implemented a mindfulness-based program or a SRSD-based writing program combined with meditation training to examine the link between writing, executive functions plus attention, and school performance in primary school. During the seminar, these studies will be presented, with a focus on the intervention programs developed, results achieved, and practical implications.
Invités par : Marie Van Reybroeck
Friday 23 June 10:30 am
Room: Salle du Conseil, A224
Dissecting the reading circuit in the bilingual brain: facing the challenges of 7T fMRI
Minye Zhan, UNICOG, Neurospin, INSERM, CEA
With its superior signal-to-noise ratio and spatial resolution, 7T functional scanning has been increasingly used in studying human brain functions. However, the characteristics of 7T functional data also pose multiple conceptual- and analysis-related challenges to the assumptions and conventions established at lower magnetic fields and spatial resolutions. Using our recent 7T bilingual fMRI study as an example, I will present the challenges, and discuss their implications for more general 3T and 7T applications.
Invited by: Olivier Collignon, Filippo Cerpelloni
Thursday 15 June 10:30 - 12:00
Room A224 Salle du Conseil
Impacts of reading acquisition on spoken language and visual information processing: Looking beyond the connections between the auditory and visual systems.
Chotiga Pattamadilok, CNRS - Laboratoire Parole & Langage
Literacy acquisition is one of the most powerful cultural acquisitions that induces massive changes in cognitive functions, brain organization and brain structure, both within and outside the language system. Among these changes, a number of studies have been focusing on the emergence (and reinforcement) of the connections between the auditory and the visual systems. These connections are considered as the core mechanism of reading, since they allow readers to precisely and rapidly translate abstract symbols into speech sounds and vice versa. During the talk, I will first discuss the nature of the bidirectional connections between the auditory and visual systems, i.e., whether they are symmetrical or are biased in favor of one direction. Then, I will present a series of behavioral and brain imaging studies that examined how, through these connections, the cognitive processes that are engaged during speech processing become increasingly “contaminated” by orthographic knowledge, making the two language codes hardly dissociable. Likewise, how the neural responses within the visual ventral pathway become sensitive to speech sounds. These findings led us to look beyond the surface connections between the two language codes and to examine the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying these cross-modal activities which reflect profound modifications within the spoken language and the visual systems themselves.
Invited by: Alice Van Audenhaege, Olivier Collignon
Tuesday 13 June 11:15 am
Room E139
Methodological considerations in designing writing research in secondary and higher education
Jochem Aben, Radboud University - The Netherlands
Research questions in the social sciences often require refined methodological designs in order to be answered, as variables of interest such as thought processes, interpersonal perceptions, and learning effects can be challenging to capture. The aim of this seminar is to discuss some of the methodological designs that I used in my research, in order to establish the potential value of these methodological designs for your own research. More specifically, I will present several methodologies that I used in order to capture thought processes, interpersonal perceptions, and learning effects in the domain of writing research. The general aim of these studies was to contribute to improving students’ writing skills, by investigating the effects of peer-feedback, dialogical feedback, and process-oriented feedback on writing skills. After the presentation, we will talk about the extent to which and the way in which the discussed methodologies can be used in your own educational and psychological research.
Invited by: Liesje Coertjens
Tuesday 16 May 10h30 am
Room : Salle du Conseil A224
The Plight of People Living with HIV: Consequences of HIV Stigma in Organizations
Simon Restubog, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
HIV is the most stigmatized medical condition and the stigma against people living with HIV (PLHIV, hereafter) remains profound and pervasive despite increased access to effective treatment. In addition, although open and progressive workplace policies are widely in place to curb stigma, PLHIV still suffer from discrimination and mistreatment. In this presentation, I discuss two empirical papers which seek to explain how and when HIV stigma impacts work-related outcomes among employed PLHIV. In the first paper, drawing from the appraisal theory of emotion, we developed and tested a dual-path moderated mediation model of the underlying roles of fear and shame in the relationship between HIV stigma and work effectiveness. We also investigated how two classes of protective factors – core self-evaluations (CSE) and CD4 cell count – influence the extent to which stigma-induced fear and shame harm their work-related behaviors. Data from PLHIV workers surveyed over three measurement periods found support for the dual-stage moderated mediation model linking HIV stigma and work effectiveness via shame under lower (vs higher) levels of CSE and CD4 cell count. In the second paper, drawing from a self-determination perspective, we hypothesized that basic psychological needs are compromised among PLHIV and this mediates the relationship between HIV stigma and work-related outcomes (i.e., career satisfaction, work engagement and turnover). Daily diary data collected over a 7-week period demonstrated that psychological needs satisfaction mediated the relationship between HIV stigma and career satisfaction. Moreover, survey data from three measurement periods replicated the daily diary findings. We also found that Time 1 HIV stigma was negatively related to Time 3 work engagement and positively related to Time 3 turnover via Time 2 psychological needs satisfaction. In sum, HIV stigma undermines PLHIV’s psychological needs satisfaction, which impairs their overall work functioning. I will conclude by discussing future directions for research on the vulnerable workforce including other current/on-going projects.
Invited by: Gaëtane Caesens, Florence Stinglhamber
Tuesday 2 May 9:00 am
Room E139
Nature of the Representations in Working Memory: The case of Aphantasia
Gaën Plancher, Université Lumière Lyon 2
The inescapable forgetting of even small amounts of information in the short term is a striking limitation of human memory that has for a long time attracted the interest of psychologists. Some theories assume that memory traces suffer from a temporal decay in the short term, and that to avoid forgetting, participants run maintenance mechanisms to keep memory traces activated. We know for decades that verbal information can be maintained by articulatory rehearsal. More recently, it has been claimed that all types of information can be maintained through a general, domain-free rehearsal process relying on attention, termed attentional refreshing. Attentional refreshing can be described as a process by which the level of activation of memory traces is restored by focusing attention. In the first part of my talk, using behavioral and neuronal measures, I will provide evidence that verbal rehearsal and attentional refreshing are independent. Second, I will talk about aphantasia which has been recently discovered and described as the inability to create mental images in working memory. I will present a study suggesting that aphantasia relies on a genuine inability to generate mental images in working memory, rather than on a deficit in accessing these images. Since aphantasics manage to perform cognitive tasks involving working memory processes, their condition raises the question of amodal representations in working memory.
Invited by Olivier Luminet & Laboratoire Illuminetti
Mercredi 26 avril à 10h45
Salle E139
Se souvenir des catastrophes : travailler entre histoire et psychologie cognitive sur la mémoire individuelle et collective d’un événement bouleversant
Lucrèce Ceux, Université Grenoble-Alpes
Au sein des memory studies, les disciplines intéressées par la nature et usages de la mémoire adoptent des approches conceptuelles et méthodologiques différentes, compliquant le dialogue interdisciplinaire. Cette présentation montre comment l'histoire et la psychologie cognitive peuvent être croisées pour étudier le lien entre mémoire individuelle et collective, en observant la mémoire et l’oubli des catastrophes. Deux études de cas ont été retenues : l’effondrement d’un terril à Aberfan, au Pays de Galles en 1966, et le glissement de terrain du Roc des Fiz, en Haute-Savoie en 1970. Suivant une approche d’abord principalement historique, les effets à court et long terme des prises de paroles médiatiques et publiques au sujet des deux catastrophes ont été étudiés à l’aide d’un corpus de sources historiques. La permanence de la mémoire de la catastrophe d’Aberfan au sein de la société galloise contraste avec celle du Roc des Fiz, qu’un groupe de proche des victimes tente difficilement de réhabiliter depuis 50 ans. Le rôle des médias dans le demi-siècle qui a suivi chaque catastrophe et la construction de l’événement au sein des populations et territoires concernés sont apparus comme deux facteurs centraux. L’influence de ces facteurs sur la mémoire a ensuite été testée au sein de deux études mobilisant des questionnaires, conçus suivant des méthodes issues de la psychologie cognitive. Un tel croisement interdisciplinaire a permis d’aborder de manière plus nuancée la mise en mémoire des catastrophes dans le temps, en fonction des intérêts individuels et des « cadres sociaux » dans lesquels ils évoluent.
Invitée par Olivier Luminet et ARC Re-Member (transmission of memories related to stigmatisation)
Tuesday 25 April 11:00 am
Room: Socr 20
Exploring the cognitive processing underlying numerical cognition in typical and atypical development
Gisella Decarli, University of Trento
The development of numerical cognition has been linked to a variety of cognitive processing from domain-specific to domain-general abilities. In parallel, also developmental dyscalculia (or DD, a learning disability in math) has been associated to several deficits, from lower acuity of nonsymbolic perception, to a deficit in accessing numerical magnitude from symbols, to impairments in non-numerical cognitive abilities. The heterogeneity of the criteria used for the recruitment and diagnosis of DD makes the picture even more complex. In the current talk, I will present recent findings that aim to explore the role of different cognitive processing in the acquisition of numerical knowledge adopting a developmental perspective.
Invited by: Michael Andres, Mauro Pesenti
Monday 17 April 10 am - 12am
Room : Salle du Conseil A224
Investigating Day-to-Day Associations between Parental Burnout and Family Media Use
Margaret Kerr, Unversity of Wisconsin - Madison
Research on digital media and child development often overlooks the larger family context in which media are used, ignoring the influence of parents as gatekeepers of early technology and digital media use. This is despite evidence that parent well-being predicts household media use (Conners et al., 2007; McDaniel & Radesky, 2020; Pempek & McDaniel, 2016). Further, parents are seldom asked why they use media. When asked, parents endorse many instrumental uses for digital media, such as occupying children, managing children’s behavior, and sharing media experiences together (Kim et al., 2021; Nikken, 2019; Wolfers, 2021). To date, little research has explored how indicators of parental well-being, such as parental burnout, influence the reasons why parents use digital media for themselves or their children. Parental burnout, a syndrome characterized by overwhelming exhaustion, emotional distancing from one’s children, and loss of accomplishment in one’s parental role, has detrimental consequences for family well-being. The Balances between Risks & Resources Theory (Mikolajczak & Roskam, 2018) posits that parental burnout occurs when there is a chronic imbalance between parenting risks and resources. Digital media may serve as an important coping tool, or resource, for parents that helps mitigate parental burnout. On the other hand, parental burnout may lead to less adaptive uses of digital media, such as to regulate children’s emotions rather than as a shared bonding experience. The findings of this presentation will explore daily symptoms of parental burnout and their associations with parents’ reasons for using digital media with and around children as a first step in understanding potential temporal links between parental burnout and family media use.
Using the validated ESM items assessing parental burnout (Blanchard et al., 2021), the current study explores daily symptoms of parental burnout and family media use in a sample of 59 U.S. parents of young children (3-5 years) over a 7-day study period. Multilevel models were used to explore within- and between-person associations; preliminary within-person results suggested that, controlling for the other two burnout items, parents’ feelings of exhaustion on a given day were positively associated with their likelihood of using media to regulate their own emotions that same day, b = 0.15, SE = 0.05, p = .001. Further, between-person findings demonstrated that parents who reported higher average levels of parental exhaustion were more likely to report using media to regulate their emotions over the course of the study period. These links were not present for parents’ feelings of being fed up or feeling distant from their children. These initial results suggest there may be important links between parental burnout and how parents use media with their family. Additional analyses will explore the temporal nature of these associations as well as links between parental burnout symptoms and use of media to regulate children’s emotions.
Invited by: Isabelle Roskam, Moïra Mikolajczak
Vendredi 31 mars de 12h45 à 13h45
Auditoire Socr -240
Réduire les inégalités scolaires dans une société inégale : Freins et leviers à la promotion de l’égalité en contexte éducatif
Céline Darnon, Université Clermont Auvergne
Ces dernières années, beaucoup de recherches en éducation ont mis en évidence l’efficacité de certaines pratiques evidence-based pour améliorer la performance scolaire des élèves et parfois réduire les inégalités de performances qui existent entre élèves issus de milieux favorisés et défavorisés. Toutefois, l’implémentation de ces pratiques dans le quotidien de la classe se heurte à un certain nombre de freins. Pour comprendre ces freins, nous proposons de replacer l’Ecole dans le contexte dans lequel elle œuvre : la société dans son ensemble. En effet, à l’Ecole se joue une importante sélection, supposée méritocratique, qui in fine, tend à reproduire et légitimer les inégalités qui existent entre les groupes au sein de la société. Nous présenterons des études
corrélationnelles et expérimentales qui permettent d’alimenter cette idée et d’illustrer ces freins ainsi que leurs sources et leurs conséquences sur la motivation des élèves.
Invitée par : Vincent Yzerbyt & Louvain Social Psychology Lab
Thursday 16 March 2:30 pm
Room : salle du conseil A224
Decoding brain activity: classification, inference, and related issues
Luca Cecchetti, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
In the last two decades, decoding studies have become increasingly popular in the neuroimaging literature. The central tenets of decoding are: (1) that distinct classes of stimuli or tasks exist - e.g., animals versus tools, (2) that stimulus features defining a specific class are known and under experimental control - e.g., animals, but not tools, are living creatures and capable of social interactions, and (3) that the brain responds differentially to each class - e.g., animals evoke a response in lateral, rather than medial VOTC.
Researchers operationalize the decoding of brain activity in terms of supervised learning, and - in case of above-chance accuracy - they infer that a specific region contains information about the feature-defining class. However, the complexity of stimuli employed in human neuroscience makes it impractical to control for all alternative categorizations not considered by researchers during study planning. This may have (at least) two detrimental effects.
Firstly, there may be more than a single confusion matrix that describes the stimuli, and there is no reason to believe that stimuli are evenly distributed between all these alternative descriptions. One of the practical implications of imbalanced data is that accuracy no longer represents an adequate metric to assess classification performance. Most importantly, the successful decoding of brain activity is not sufficient to determine the information content of a specific region.
Using neuroimaging data collected from twenty participants and a well-established language comprehension paradigm, I present empirical evidence that such issues occur in actual neuroimaging experiments. In the current data, classification accuracy is highly biased toward sensitivity, and brain regions classifying meaningful from non-meaningful speech extend beyond the canonical language network. Interestingly, maps representing other performance metrics (e.g., precision) are more useful for delineating language-selective regions, when compared with meta-analytic evidence. I discuss possible approaches to mitigate these issues and how decoding results should be interpreted in neuroimaging studies.
Invited by: Olivier Collignon
Thursday 16 March 10:30 am
Room E139
Modeling cross-modal correspondences through fMRI
Giacomo Handjaras, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
The ability to combine signals across different sensory modalities is essential for an efficient interaction with the external world. To this end, the brain must detect information conveyed by different senses, coupling coherent events in space and time, and solving the correspondence problem.
Evidence exists that basic multisensory processing is already present in newborns, while audiovisual experience appears to be critical for the development of more complex multisensory computations lifelong. Nonetheless, the extent to which audiovisual experience is a mandatory prerequisite for the brain to develop and become able to detect shared features between senses is still undefined. Here, we tested brain synchronization during the presentation of an audiovisual, audio-only or video-only version of the same narrative in distinct groups of sensory-deprived (congenitally blind and deaf) and typically developed individuals acquired through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). By taking advantage of computational modeling, we provided a fine-grained description of the naturalistic stimulation by extracting perceptual features from both the auditory and visual streams, and semantic properties of the narrative from large language models. Intersubject correlation analysis revealed that the superior temporal cortex was synchronized across auditory and visual conditions, even in sensory-deprived individuals who lack any audiovisual experience. This synchronization was primarily mediated by low-level perceptual features, and relied on a similar modality-independent topographical organization of slow temporal dynamics. This evidence suggests that the superior temporal cortex is endowed with a functional scaffolding to yield a common representation across multisensory events.
Invited by: Olivier Collignon