Étude des transferts intermodaux lors de taches de rotation mentale (spécificité tactile, indépendance sensorielle ou dépendance visuelle ?)

Ce travail de thèse repose sur la combinaison de deux paradigmes de recherche en psychologie cognitive : la rotation mentale et les transferts intermodaux/inter-tâches. Dans notre première étude (Expériences 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, et 2b), l'objectif était d'évaluer la dépendance/indépendance des traitements visuel et tactile, lors de tâches de rotation mentale : le Test des Rotations Mentales (Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978) et une tâche élémentaire de rotation mentale (Shepard & Metzler, 1971). En utilisant un plan expérimental intra-sujet, nous avons comparé quatre conditions expérimentales incluant des apprentissages intramodaux : 1. Visuel-Visuel ; 2. Tactile-Tactile, et des transferts intermodaux : 3. Visuel-Tactile ; 4. Tactile-Visuel. Les participants ont ainsi réalisé deux tâches successives dans des conditions sensorielles similaires ou différentes (session 1 et session 2). Nos résultats révèlent que la rotation mentale peut dépendre de processus de traitement des représentations spécifiques à la modalité sensorielle utilisée. Les informations découlant d'une expérience visuelle sont réutilisables dans la condition tactile, alors qu'à l'inverse, nous n'avons observé que très peu de transferts tactiles en condition visuelle. Les traitements visuels et tactiles, sur des objets tridimensionnels complexes, permettent ainsi le développement de stratégies d'imagerie mentale spécifiques (Visuel-Visuel-IM vs. Tactile-Spatial-IM), découlant de différents modes de traitements perceptifs (visuel-global vs. tactile-spatial)...The work presented in this dissertation is based on the combination of two research paradigms in the field of cognitive psychology: mental rotation and intermodal/inter-task transfer of learning. In our first study (Experiments 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, and 2b), the objective was to evaluate the processing dependence/independence of visual and tactile information during two mental rotation tasks: the Mental Rotation Test (Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978) and an object mental rotation task (Shepard & Metzler, 1971). Using an intra-subject experimental design, we compared four experimental conditions including intramodal learning: 1. Visual-Visual ; 2. Tactile-Tactile, and intermodal transfer: 3. Visual-Tactile ; 4. Tactile-Visual. Subjects performed two successive tasks in similar perceptual conditions or different perceptual conditions (session 1 and session 2). Our results revealed that mental rotation can depend on treatment processes of mental representations specific to the perceptual modality being used. The information derived from visual prior experience can be used in the tactile condition, whereas we observed few significant tactile transfers in the visual condition. Visual and tactile treatments on complex three-dimensional objects thus permit specific mental imagery strategies (Visual-Visual-IM vs. Tactile-Spatial-IM), derived from different perceptual exploration strategies (visual-global vs. tactile-spatial)...POITIERS-SCD-Bib. électronique (861949901) / SudocSudocFranceF

Study of the morphology of copper hydroxynitrate nanoplatelets obtained by controlled double jet precipitation and urea hydrolysis

A copper hydroxynitrate of stoichiometry Cu-2(OH)(3)NO3, analogous to the layered double hydroxide family, was synthesized by the so-called controlled double jet precipitation technique, and by hydrolysis of urea in the presence of copper nitrate. Special attention has been focused on the size, morphology and agglomeration tendency of the particles. The aim of this work is to define the optimum precipitation conditions in terms of quality and dispersability of the recovered product. Such platelet-like particles Can be used as anisotropic fillers in nanocomposite materials. Several reaction parameters such as flow and concentration of the reactant solutions, design of the reactor and addition of a growth modifier were studied. (C) 2003 Elsevier -Science B.V. All rights reserved

Saturation dependence of the streaming potential coefficient

Observations of streaming potential for unsaturated conditions do not always show the same trend de10 pending on the hydrodynamic conditions and because of a lake of coherency between the data processing procedures. We combine the data from three studies published in the literature, acquired during non-steady state drainage experiments, and apply the same processing steps. We model the hydrodynamic behaviour of these experiments to confirm that they experienced different flow dynamics. We argue that the raw SP data should not be corrected unless a clear drift of the electrodes stability is observed. The combined hydrody namic behaviour and the streaming potential response show that (a) the observations of one of the experiment (exp #1) are associated to a limited range of water saturation (0.85-1). The corresponding signals could therefore be fairly modelled assuming no saturation dependence of the SPC whatsoever; (b) the observations of exp #3 led to a SPC that can be larger than its value at saturation; (c) the observations of the exp #2 show a non-monotonous behaviour of the SPC as saturation decreases. The underlying physics of a non-monotonous SPC is related to water/air interfaces as shown by the results of the lattice Boltzmann numerical simulations. The main contribution to the SPC behaviour comes from the charged water/air interfaces and depends on the dynamic state of moving or entrapped bubbles. We finally describe the consequences of such a behaviour on the seismoelectric conversions for unsaturated conditions.Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísica

Modeling the growth of stylolites in sedimentary rocks

[1] Stylolites are ubiquitous pressure solution seams found in sedimentary rocks. Their morphology is shown to follow two self-affine regimes. Analyzing the scaling properties of their height over their average direction shows that (1) at small scale, they are self-affine surfaces with a Hurst exponent around 1, and (2) at large scale, they follow another self-affine scaling with Hurst exponent around 0.5. In the present paper, we show theoretically the influence of the main principal stress and the local geometry of the stylolitic interface on the dissolution reaction rate. We compute how it is affected by the deviation between the principal stress axis and the local interface between the rock and the soft material in the stylolite. The free energy entering in the dissolution reaction kinetics is expressed from the surface energy term and via integration from the stress perturbations due to these local misalignments. The resulting model shows the interface evolution at different stress conditions. In the stylolitic case, i.e., when the main principal stress is normal to the interface, two different stabilizing terms dominate at small and large scales which are linked respectively to the surface energy and to the elastic interactions. Integrating the presence of small-scale heterogeneities related to the rock properties of the grains in the model leads to the formulation of a Langevin equation predicting the dynamic evolution of the surface. This equation leads to saturated surfaces obeying the two observed scaling laws. Analytical and numerical analysis of this surface evolution model shows that the crossover length separating both scaling regimes depends directly on the applied far-field stress magnitude. This method gives the basis for the development of a paleostress magnitude marker. We apply the computation of this marker, i.e., the morphological analysis, on a stylolite found in the Dogger limestone layer located in the neighborhood of the ANDRA Underground Research Laboratory at Bure (eastern France). The results are consistent with the two scaling regimes expected, and the practical determination of the major principal paleostress, from the estimation of a crossover length, is illustrated on this example

Hyperons in Two Flavor Chiral Perturbation Theory

We use two-flavor chiral perturbation theory to describe hyperons. We focus on the strangeness conserving sector, and, as an example, calculate hyperon masses. Convergence of this two-flavor chiral expansion for observables is improved over the three-flavor theory. The cost, however, is a larger number of low-energy constants that must be ultimately determined from lattice QCD data. A formula for the mass of the omega baryon is derived to sixth order in this expansion, and will aid lattice practitioners in scale setting or tuning the strange quark mass.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figs, version published in PL

Bounded-Degree Polyhedronization of Point Sets

Abstract In 1994 Grünbaum showed that, given a point set S in R 3 , it is always possible to construct a polyhedron whose vertices are exactly S. Such a polyhedron is called a polyhedronization of S. Agarwal et al. extended this work in 2008 by showing that there always exists a polyhedronization that can be decomposed into a union of tetrahedra (tetrahedralizable). In the same work they introduced the notion of a serpentine polyhedronization for which the dual of its tetrahedralization is a chain. In this work we present a randomized algorithm running in O(n log 6 n) expected time that constructs a serpentine polyhedronization that has vertices with degree at most 7, answering an open question by Agarwal et al