Training work-related social skills in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder using a tablet-based intervention

International audienc

Artificial selection for schooling behaviour and its effects on associative learning abilities

The evolution of collective behaviour has been proposed to have important effects on individual cognitive abilities. Yet, in what way they are related remains enigmatic. In this context, the 'distributed cognition' hypothesis suggests that reliance on other group members relaxes selection for individual cognitive abilities. Here, we tested how cognitive processes respond to evolutionary changes in collective motion using replicate lines of guppies (Poecilia reticulata) artificially selected for the degree of schooling behaviour (group polarization) with >15% difference in schooling propensity. We assessed associative learning in females of these selection lines in a series of cognitive assays: colour associative learning, reversal learning, social associative learning, and individual and collective spatial associative learning. We found that control females were faster than polarization-selected females at fulfilling a learning criterion only in the colour associative learning assay, but they were also less likely to reach a learning criterion in the individual spatial associative learning assay. Hence, although testing several cognitive domains, we found weak support for the distributed cognition hypothesis. We propose that any cognitive implications of selection for collective behaviour lie outside of the cognitive abilities included in food-motivated associative learning for visual and spatial cues.</p

Interference effect of food and emotional stimuli in Stroop-like tasks for children and adults with Prader-Willi Syndrome

International audienceInterference effect of food and emotional stimuli in Stroop-like tasks for children and adults with Prader-Willi Syndrome. The aim of this work was to study the way items related to food or emotion are processed by a population known to have difficulties with dietary restriction, namely individuals with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS). Given the presence of intellectual disability (ID) in PWS, our experiments were designed to examine whether these difficulties were specific to PWS or linked with their ID. Two modified Stroop tasks (i.e., a food version and an emotional version) were administered to seventy-four children (aged between 6 and 16 years old) divided into three groups (one with PWS, one with ID matched on age and Intellectual Quotient (IQ), and one healthy group matched on age) and to eighty-four adults (aged between 18 and 48 years old) distributed in the same three groups. For both tasks, a picture version was used for the children and a word version for the adults. For the food Stroop task, (Experiment 1), materials were composed of low or high-caloric food items and stimuli not related to food. The results show a food Stroop effect for children and adults with PWS that was absent in the group of healthy participants. Moreover, a food Stroop effect was also significant for adults with ID. For the emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2), materials were composed of negative, positive and neutral stimuli. The emotional Stroop effect was also obtained for children and adults with PWS as well as for the healthy group, but not for the age- and IQ-matched group. For the PWS groups, results show a preservation to process positive pictures for children and difficulties to process negative stimuli for both age-groups. These results suggest that people with PWS have difficulties in disengaging their attention when food stimuli are present in their environment and poorer abilities to process negative ones. These difficulties endure in adulthood

Perspectives

La profonde dynamique de changement que connaissent toutes les sociétés contemporaines impose désormais de centrer le regard sur l’évolution des pratiques, des contextes, des modes de représentation et de diffusion, des modalités de transmission ou des phénomènes de revitalisation et de patrimonialisation. Ce dossier propose une réflexion prospective, s’appuyant sur les nouveaux axes de recherche, les terrains et les méthodes récemment apparus, ainsi que l’interdisciplinarité de plus en plus marquée qui caractérise l’ethnomusicologie aujourd’hui. La prise en compte de la mobilité, des phénomènes de migration, de la globalisation et de l’appropriation de cultures musicales exogènes, notamment par les outils issus de la « révolution numérique », ont imposé aux chercheurs de s’adapter et d’inventer une ethnomusicologie différente, à partir d’ethnographies inédites (par exemple sur les réseaux sociaux ou sur des terrains multi-situés), et nécessitant un nouveau type de positionnement