Apports qualitatifs de l'étude de cas en enseignement/apprentissage à distance

Peer reviewe

L’intégration scolaire des élèves primo-arrivants

Le souhait d’intégrer tous les enfants dans les écoles publiques se fait ressentir au niveau politique ainsi que sur le terrain. Les enseignants sont confrontés à des élèves ayant des besoins éducatifs particuliers, dont les élèves primo-arrivants. Cependant, depuis quelques années la situation s’est complexifiée pour certains d’entre eux. En effet, la langue ne représente plus la principale difficulté et à cela s’ajoute un parcours scolaire irrégulier et parfois même l’absence de scolarisation. Certaines écoles conscientes de cette problématique tentent de répondre de manière optimale aux besoins de ces élèves et prennent la décision d’ouvrir une classe d’accueil. Ce travail permet de montrer les différentes mesures pouvant être mises en place dans le cadre de l’intégration de ces élèves. De plus, il expose les enjeux liés à l’apprentissage d’une langue et ce dont l’enseignant peut avoir recours dans son enseignement

Cases studies to enhance quality in Web activities

On-line activities (case studies, peer assessment and distance training) proposed in a course to graduate students are described and evaluated as examples of quality enhancement. The impact on students performances, the level of competencies they develop, the role of tutors and the changing relationship student-tutor-course are highlighted.Peer reviewe

The odor context facilitates the perception of low-intensity facial expressions of emotion

It has been established that the recognition of facial expressions integrates contextual information. In this study, we aimed to clarify the influence of contextual odors. The participants were asked to match a target face varying in expression intensity with non-ambiguous expressive faces. Intensity variations in the target faces were designed by morphing expressive faces with neutral faces. In addition, the influence of verbal information was assessed by providing half the participants with the emotion names. Odor cues were manipulated by placing participants in a pleasant (strawberry), aversive (butyric acid), or no-odor control context. The results showed two main effects of the odor context. First, the minimum amount of visual information required to perceive an expression was lowered when the odor context was emotionally congruent: happiness was correctly perceived at lower intensities in the faces displayed in the pleasant odor context, and the same phenomenon occurred for disgust and anger in the aversive odor context. Second, the odor context influenced the false perception of expressions that were not used in target faces, with distinct patterns according to the presence of emotion names. When emotion names were provided, the aversive odor context decreased intrusions for disgust ambiguous faces but increased them for anger. When the emotion names were not provided, this effect did not occur and the pleasant odor context elicited an overall increase in intrusions for negative expressions. We conclude that olfaction plays a role in the way facial expressions are perceived in interaction with other contextual influences such as verbal information

Analyse lexicale outillée de la parole transcrite de patients schizophrènes

International audienceThis article details the results of analyses we conducted on the discourse of schizophrenic patients, at the oral production (disfluences) and lexical (part-of-speech and lemmas) levels. This study is part of a larger project, which includes other levels of analyses (syntax and discourse). The obtained results should help us rebut or identify new linguistic evidence participating in the manifestation of a dysfunction at these different levels. The corpus contains more than 375,000 words, its analysis therefore required that we use Natural Language Processing (NLP) and lexicometric tools. In particular, we processed disfluencies and parts-of-speech separately, which allowed us to demonstrate that if schizophrenic patients do produce more disfluencies than control, their lexical richness is not significatively different.Cet article détaille les résultats d'analyses réalisées sur la transcription d'entretiens avec des patients schizophrènes, aux niveaux de la production orale (disfluences) et du lexique (morpho-syntaxe et lemmes). L'étude s'inscrit dans le cadre d'un projet plus large qui prévoit d'autres niveaux d'analyse (syntaxique et du discours), les résultats obtenus devant nous permettre de réfuter ou d'identifier de nouveaux indices linguistiques présents dans la manifestation d'un dysfonctionnement à ces différents niveaux. Le corpus traité contient plus de 375~000 mots, son analyse a donc nécessité l'utilisation d'outils de traitement automatique des langues (TAL) et de textométrie. Nous avons en particulier séparé le traitement des disfluences du traitement lexical, ce qui nous a permis de montrer que si les schizophrènes produisent davantage d'achoppements et de répétitions (disfluences) que les témoins, la richesse de leur lexique n'est pas significativement différente

Atypical nested 22q11.2 duplications between LCR22B and LCR22D are associated with neurodevelopmental phenotypes including autism spectrum disorder with incomplete penetrance

Molecular Genetics & Genomic Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Background: Chromosome 22q11.2 is susceptible to genomic rearrangements and the most frequently reported involve deletions and duplications between low copy repeats LCR22A to LCR22D. Atypical nested deletions and duplications are rarer and can provide a valuable opportunity to investigate the dosage effects of a smaller subset of genes within the 22q11.2 genomic disorder region. Methods: We describe thirteen individuals from six families, each with atypical nested duplications within the central 22q11.2 region between LCR22B and LCR22D. We then compared the molecular and clinical data for patients from this study and the few reported atypical duplication cases, to the cases with larger typical duplications between LCR22A and LCR22D. Further, we analyzed genes with the nested region to identify candidates highly enriched in human brain tissues. Results: We observed that atypical nested duplications are heterogeneous in size, often familial, and associated with incomplete penetrance and highly variable clinical expressivity. We found that the nested atypical duplications are a possible risk factor for neurodevelopmental phenotypes, particularly for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), speech and language delay, and behavioral abnormalities. In addition, we analyzed genes within the nested region between LCR22B and LCR22D to identify nine genes (ZNF74, KLHL22, MED15, PI4KA, SERPIND1, CRKL, AIFM3, SLC7A4, and BCRP2) with enriched expression in the nervous system, each with unique spatiotemporal patterns in fetal and adult brain tissues. Interestingly, PI4KA is prominently expressed in the brain, and this gene is included either partially or completely in all of our subjects. Conclusion: Our findings confirm variable expressivity and incomplete penetrance for atypical nested 22q11.2 duplications and identify genes such as PI4KA to be directly relevant to brain development and disorder. We conclude that further work is needed to elucidate the basis of variable neurodevelopmental phenotypes and to exclude the presence of a second disorder. Our findings contribute to the genotype–phenotype data for atypical nested 22q11.2 duplications, with implications for genetic counseling

Temporal structure of consciousness and minimal self in schizophrenia

International audienceThe concept of the minimal self refers to the consciousness of oneself as an immediate subject of experience. According to recent studies, disturbances of the minimal self may be a core feature of schizophrenia. They are emphasized in classical psychiatry literature and in phenomenological work. Impaired minimal self-experience may be defined as a distortion of one's first-person experiential perspective as, for example, an " altered presence " during which the sense of the experienced self (" mineness ") is subtly affected, or " altered sense of demarcation, " i.e., a difficulty discriminating the self from the non-self. Little is known, however, about the cognitive basis of these disturbances. In fact, recent work indicates that disorders of the self are not correlated with cognitive impairments commonly found in schizophrenia such as working-memory and attention disorders. In addition, a major difficulty with exploring the minimal self experimentally lies in its definition as being non-self-reflexive, and distinct from the verbalized, explicit awareness of an " I. " In this paper, we shall discuss the possibility that disturbances of the minimal self observed in patients with schizophrenia are related to alterations in time processing. We shall review the literature on schizophrenia and time processing that lends support to this possibility. In particular we shall discuss the involvement of temporal integration windows on different time scales (implicit time processing) as well as duration perception disturbances (explicit time processing) in disorders of the minimal self. We argue that a better understanding of the relationship between time and the minimal self as well of issues of embodiment require research that looks more specifically at implicit time processing. Some methodological issues will be discussed