Qualité et évolution des représentations spatiales lors d’une première lecture de L’Occupation des sols

Cet article étudie la qualité et l’évolution des représentations spatiales lors d’une première lecture de L’Occupation des sols, une nouvelle de Jean Echenoz qui accorde une place remarquable à l’espace. Une expérience a été conduite auprès de 40 participants. La petite taille des représentations spatiales remémorées (environ 7 référents spatiaux en moyenne) témoigne de l’importance que joue la mémoire de travail dans leur constitution. Les représentations convergent assez vite vers quelques éléments saillants, par leur fréquence et leur pertinence dans le texte. Bien que ces résultats puissent sembler évidents a posteriori, ils mettent néanmoins en lumière à quel point les représentations spatiales élaborées lors d’une première lecture sont pauvres et pertinentes à la fois.This paper studies the quality and evolution of spatial representations formed by readers reading L’Occupation des sols for the first time. L’Occupation des sols is a short story written by Jean Echenoz in which space is given a prominent role. An experiment was run with 40 participants. The spatial representations formed by readers are small (around 7 spatial referents on average). This suggests that working memory plays an important role in filtering them. The representations converge rapidly to a few elements made salient in the story by their frequency or narrative relevance. These results may seem unsurprising a posteriori. However, they show how poor and yet pertinent spatial representations formed by readers reading a story for the first time are.

Accelerated partial breast irradiation: the case for current use

The treatment of early stage breast cancer is evolving from traditional breast conservation techniques, employing conventionally fractionated whole breast irradiation, to techniques in which partial breast irradiation is used in an accelerated fractionation scheme. A growing body of evidence exists, including favorable findings. Additional studies are under way that may ultimately prove equivalence. The logic behind this approach is reviewed, and the currently available data are presented to support the current use of carefully applied partial breast irradiation techniques in appropriately selected and informed patients

Recent advances in understanding the roles of whole genome duplications in evolution

Ancient whole-genome duplications (WGDs)—paleopolyploidy events—are key to solving Darwin’s ‘abominable mystery’ of how flowering plants evolved and radiated into a rich variety of species. The vertebrates also emerged from their invertebrate ancestors via two WGDs, and genomes of diverse gymnosperm trees, unicellular eukaryotes, invertebrates, fishes, amphibians and even a rodent carry evidence of lineage-specific WGDs. Modern polyploidy is common in eukaryotes, and it can be induced, enabling mechanisms and short-term cost-benefit assessments of polyploidy to be studied experimentally. However, the ancient WGDs can be reconstructed only by comparative genomics: these studies are difficult because the DNA duplicates have been through tens or hundreds of millions of years of gene losses, mutations, and chromosomal rearrangements that culminate in resolution of the polyploid genomes back into diploid ones (rediploidisation). Intriguing asymmetries in patterns of post-WGD gene loss and retention between duplicated sets of chromosomes have been discovered recently, and elaborations of signal transduction systems are lasting legacies from several WGDs. The data imply that simpler signalling pathways in the pre-WGD ancestors were converted via WGDs into multi-stranded parallelised networks. Genetic and biochemical studies in plants, yeasts and vertebrates suggest a paradigm in which different combinations of sister paralogues in the post-WGD regulatory networks are co-regulated under different conditions. In principle, such networks can respond to a wide array of environmental, sensory and hormonal stimuli and integrate them to generate phenotypic variety in cell types and behaviours. Patterns are also being discerned in how the post-WGD signalling networks are reconfigured in human cancers and neurological conditions. It is fascinating to unpick how ancient genomic events impact on complexity, variety and disease in modern life

Same Test, Better Scores: Boosting the Reliability of Short Online Intelligence Recruitment Tests with Nested Logit Item Response Theory Models

Assessing job applicants’ general mental ability online poses psychometric challenges due to the necessity of having brief but accurate tests. Recent research (Myszkowski & Storme, 2018) suggests that recovering distractor information through Nested Logit Models (NLM; Suh & Bolt, 2010) increases the reliability of ability estimates in reasoning matrix-type tests. In the present research, we extended this result to a different context (online intelligence testing for recruitment) and in a larger sample ( N = 2949 job applicants). We found that the NLMs outperformed the Nominal Response Model (Bock, 1970) and provided significant reliability gains compared with their binary logistic counterparts. In line with previous research, the gain in reliability was especially obtained at low ability levels. Implications and practical recommendations are discussed

Variability assessments of creativity

Depuis les années 1950, la pensée divergente est la principale mesure utilisée pour estimer le niveau de créativité d'un individu. si de nombreuses études lui ont été consacrées, peu se sont attachées à la décrire dans sa dimension processuelle. dans la continuité des travaux fondateurs de lubart et de gilhooly, nous développerons avec cette thèse une approche statique et une approche dynamique du processus de pensée divergente. nous proposerons plus spécifiquement une extension du modèle de résonnance émotionnelle de lubart et getz appliquée aux associations originales (pour l'aspect statique), et une modélisation par des chaînes de markov de différentes dimensions de la pensée divergente, comme les stratégies ou les catégories d'idées (pour l'aspect dynamique).This dissertation is devoted to the study of the variability of creativity evaluations, by focusing ontraining non-experts judges to enhance their expertise. In the theoretical part, various issues related tocreativity, judgment and variability are explored and provide hypotheses for the empirical part. Thefirst series of studies allows justifying the relevance of the application of a simplified model of creativityjudgment inspired by Besemer & O’Quin (1999) to the evaluation by non-experts judges of graphicproducts made by children. The rest of the empirical studies are devoted to the investigation of theeffect of the training on 1) the stability and 2) the expertise of creativity evaluations. The model ofcreative judgments provides the mechanism explaining the effect of the training on the stability andthe expertise of creativity evaluations, by emphasizing the mediating role of stability and expertise ofrelevant predictors evaluation (originality and elaboration) and of the integration function, by which thejudge combines predictors to make a creativity judgment. A final study allows studying the long-termeffect of the training. These results are discussed and future research and applications are suggested

Une lettre de F.-M. Dhanis (10-3-1893)

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How Personality Traits Predict Design-Driven Consumer Choices

To further understand why a consumer’s choices are influenced by the aesthetic value of products (Hollins & Pugh, 1990; Bloch, 1995; Schmitt & Simonson, 1997), individual differences in design-driven consumer choices must be investigated. Previous empirical work suggests that the extent to which one pays attention and is responsive to the aesthetic value of products (Bloch, Brunel, & Arnold, 2003) and Openness to experience (Sharpe & Ramanaiah, 1999) are both linked with materialism. This study aims to provide new elements to understand why consumers choose and value well-designed products, using the framework of the Big Five model of personality (John & Srivastava, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 1999), focusing more particularly on Openness to experience. 158 adult participants completed the Centrality of Visual Product Aesthetics questionnaire (CVPA; Bloch, Brunel, & Arnold, 2003), along with the Big Five Inventory (BFI; John, 1990; John & Srivastava, 1999). As hypothesized, personality significantly predicted the individuals’ tendency to prefer products with a superior design. More specifically, every subscale of the CVPA was significantly negatively correlated with Openness to experience. Implications, limitations and potential uses of these results in marketing are discussed

Career Exploration and Career Decision-Making Difficulties: The Moderating Role of Creative Self-Efficacy

This article investigated the moderating role of creative self-efficacy (CSE) on the relationship between career exploration and career decision-making difficulties among French undergraduate students (N = 415). Drawing a parallel between the career decision-making process and the notion of creative problem-solving, we reasoned that career exploration without CSE—that is, the confidence in one’s own ability to solve original and complex problems—can be associated with career decision-making difficulties. Our study shows that among students who have low levels of CSE, environmental exploration, and self-exploration regarding career options are respectively associated with dysfunctional beliefs regarding one’s career path and general indecisiveness. We discuss the implications of the results.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Weak or caring? When Sad Leaders Are Perceived As More Effective than Angry Leaders

The literature on negative emotions and impression formation of leaders make contradictory predictions on whether expressions of sadness by leaders will be perceived as more or less effective than expressions of anger by leaders. Drawing from the literature on emotions as social information and a social-cognition approach on leadership perception, we hypothesized that when the social context induces observers to form impressions of leaders’ communal qualities (as opposed to their agentic qualities), leaders who express sadness in reaction to a problematic organizational event would be seen as more effective leaders and receive more endorsement, than leaders who express anger in reaction to the same problematic event. In three experiments we found that when observers were induced to form an impression of a leaders’ communal qualities, they perceived leaders’ that expressed sadness as possessing more communal qualities, than leaders that expressed anger, but not less agentic qualities. Because leaders’ perceived communal qualities in turn positively predicted leadership effectiveness (Study 2) and leadership endorsement (Study 3), observers that were induced to form an impression of leaders’ communal qualities, perceived leaders expressing sadness to be more effective than leaders expressing anger, and preferred a sad leader above an angry leader.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe