Behavioral and Neural Indices of Metacognitive Sensitivity in Preverbal Infants

Humans adapt their behavior not only by observing the consequences of their actions but also by internally monitoring their performance. This capacity, termed metacognitive sensitivity [1 ; 2], has traditionally been denied to young children because they have poor capacities in verbally reporting their own mental states [3; 4 ; 5]. Yet, these observations might reflect children’s limited capacities for explicit self-reports, rather than limitations in metacognition per se. Indeed, metacognitive sensitivity has been shown to reflect simple computational mechanisms [1; 6; 7 ; 8], and can be found in various non-verbal species [7; 8; 9 ; 10]. Thus, it might be that this faculty is present early in development, although it would be discernible through implicit behaviors and neural indices rather than explicit self-reports. Here, by relying on such non-verbal indices, we show that 12- and 18-month-old infants internally monitor the accuracy of their own decisions. At the behavioral level, infants showed increased persistence in their initial choice after making a correct as compared to an incorrect response, evidencing an appropriate evaluation of decision confidence. Moreover, infants were able to use decision confidence adaptively to either confirm their initial choice or change their mind. At the neural level, we found that a well-established electrophysiological signature of error monitoring in adults, the error-related negativity, is similarly elicited when infants make an incorrect choice. Hence, although explicit forms of metacognition mature later during childhood, infants already estimate decision confidence, monitor their errors, and use these metacognitive evaluations to regulate subsequent behavior

Inducing Task-Relevant Responses to Speech in the Sleeping Brain

Falling asleep leads to a loss of sensory awareness and to the inability to interact with the environment [1]. While this was traditionally thought as a consequence of the brain shutting down to external inputs, it is now acknowledged that incoming stimuli can still be processed, at least to some extent, during sleep [2]. For instance, sleeping participants can create novel sensory associations between tones and odors [3] or reactivate existing semantic associations, as evidenced by event-related potentials [4; 5; 6 ; 7]. Yet, the extent to which the brain continues to process external stimuli remains largely unknown. In particular, it remains unclear whether sensory information can be processed in a flexible and task-dependent manner by the sleeping brain, all the way up to the preparation of relevant actions. Here, using semantic categorization and lexical decision tasks, we studied task-relevant responses triggered by spoken stimuli in the sleeping brain. Awake participants classified words as either animals or objects (experiment 1) or as either words or pseudowords (experiment 2) by pressing a button with their right or left hand, while transitioning toward sleep. The lateralized readiness potential (LRP), an electrophysiological index of response preparation, revealed that task-specific preparatory responses are preserved during sleep. These findings demonstrate that despite the absence of awareness and behavioral responsiveness, sleepers can still extract task-relevant information from external stimuli and covertly prepare for appropriate motor responses

Behavioral and Neural Indices of Metacognitive Sensitivity in Preverbal Infants

Humans adapt their behavior not only by observing the consequences of their actions but also by internally monitoring their performance. This capacity, termed metacognitive sensitivity [1, 2], has traditionally been denied to young children because they have poor capacities in verbally reporting their own mental states [3–5]. Yet, these observations might reflect children’s limited capacities for explicit self-reports, rather than limitations in metacognition per se. Indeed, metacognitive sensitivity has been shown to reflect simple computational mechanisms [1, 6–8], and can be found in various non-verbal species [7–10]. Thus, it might be that this faculty is present early in development, although it would be discernible through implicit behaviors and neural indices rather than explicit self-reports. Here, by relying on such non-verbal indices, we show that 12- and 18-monthold infants internally monitor the accuracy of their own decisions. At the behavioral level, infants showed increased persistence in their initial choice after making a correct as compared to an incorrect response, evidencing an appropriate evaluation of decision confidence. Moreover, infants were able to use decision confidence adaptively to either confirm their initial choice or change their mind. At the neural level, we found that a well-established electrophysiological signature of error monitoring in adults, the errorrelated negativity, is similarly elicited when infants make an incorrect choice. Hence, although explicit forms of metacognition mature later during childhood, infants already estimate decision confidence, monitor their errors, and use these metacognitive evaluations to regulate subsequent behavior

Manifeste en faveur d'une réforme globale du droit de la famille : prise de position publique d'ex-ministres québécois

Manifeste signé par d’ex-ministres de la Justice et de la Famille du Québec à l’appui d’une réforme globale du droit de la famille québécois

Développer un esprit réflexif

What do infants know about themselves? Do they have thoughts about their own thoughts? The aim of this thesis was to investigate this issue by focusing on the early development of metacognition, our capacity to monitor and regulate our own cognitive processes. Previous research essentially relied on verbal reports, and showed that reflecting upon their own mental states is difficult for preschoolers. Yet, these observations might reflect children’s limited capacities in explicitly reporting their own mental states, rather than limitations in metacognition per se. Here, by relying on methods coming from the comparative literature, we investigated the possibility that even infants could demonstrate rudimentary forms of metacognition in non-verbal settings. In a first study, we found that 12- and 18-month-olds can evaluate decision confidence, monitor their errors, and use these metacognitive computations to regulate subsequent behaviour. In a second study, we further show that 20-month-olds are able to share their own uncertainty with others in order to regulate behaviour. This last aspect of our results suggests that infants can consciously access metacognitive representations, although they remain unable to manipulate them verbally until much later during childhood. Taken together, our results highlight an important dissociation between core metacognitive capacities, already present in infancy, and more explicit aspects of metacognition, developing through an effortful process during childhood. More generally, the present work provides some evidence that infants not only consider their physical and social surroundings, but also, reflect upon their own cognitive states.Les bébés ont-ils des pensées sur leurs propres pensées? L'objet de cette thèse était d'examiner cette question en se concentrant sur le développement de la métacognition, cette capacité que nous avons d'observer et de réguler nos propres processus cognitifs. Les recherches antérieures ont documenté un développement tardif de la métacognition. Cependant, cette question a essentiellement été étudiée en demandant aux enfants de rapporter verbalement leurs propres états mentaux. En nous appuyant sur des méthodes issues de la littérature comparative, ici nous avons étudié la possibilité que même les bébés pourraient démontrer des capacités métacognitives dans des situations qui ne requièrent pas de rapport verbal. Dans une première étude, nous avons trouvé que les bébés de 12 et 18 mois détectent leurs erreurs, évaluent la confiance qu'ils peuvent avoir dans leurs décisions, et utilisent ces informations pour réguler leur comportement. Dans une deuxième étude, nous montrons que les bébés de 20 mois sont même capables de communiquer leur propre incertitude non verbalement. Cela suggère que les tout petits peuvent consciemment représenter leur propre incertitude, même si ils sont incapables de la verbaliser convenablement avant bien plus tard pendant l'enfance. Nos résultats indiquent qu'il y a une dissociation importante entre les capacités de régulation métacognitive, déjà présentes chez le bébé, et les aspects plus explicites de la métacognition, qui se développent lentement pendant l'enfance. De façon plus générale, nos résultats suggèrent que les bébés, en plus d'analyser leur environnement physique et social, peuvent aussi examiner leurs propres processus cognitifs

Research data supporting "Transient Topographical Dynamics of the Electroencephalogram Predict Brain Connectivity and Behavioural Responsiveness During Drowsiness"

This set contains 19 EEG recordings of different participants performing an auditory semantic task as they fell asleep. The participants were directed to not consume stimulants like coffee and to sleep 1–2 h less than normally before the experiment. All of the subjects were assessed as easy sleepers on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (scores 7–14). The stimuli consisted of 96 spoken English words chosen from the CELEX lexical database. Half of the words denoted animals and the other half denoted objects. The subjects were asked to classify each stimulus in its respective category (animal or object) by pressing a button. The stimuli were presented through headphones, with an average distance of 8.4 s (minimum 6.2 s) between consecutive stimuli, as the subjects were lying with their eyes closed in a reclining chair. To facilitate drowsiness, the task was performed in a dark, acoustically and electrically shielded EEG room, and the participants were told that they could fall asleep at any point during the experiment, although they were asked not to stop responding deliberately while still awake. The electroencephalogram was continuously recorded at 500 samples per second from 64 Ag/AgCl electrodes positioned and labelled according to the extended 10/20 system, with Cz as a reference and including vertical and horizontal electrooculography channels