Generalizing attentional control across dimensions and tasks: evidence from transfer of proportion-congruent effects

Three experiments investigated transfer of list-wide proportion congruent (LWPC) effects from a set of congruent and incongruent items with different frequency (inducer task) to a set of congruent and incongruent items with equal frequency (diagnostic task). Experiments 1 and 2 mixed items from horizontal and vertical Simon tasks. Tasks always involved different stimuli that varied on the same dimension (colour) in Experiment 1 and on different dimensions (colour, shape) in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 mixed trials from a manual Simon task with trials from a vocal Stroop task, with colour being the relevant stimulus in both tasks. There were two major results. First, we observed transfer of LWPC effects in Experiments 1 and 3, when tasks shared the relevant dimension, but not in Experiment 2. Second, sequential modulations of congruency effects transferred in Experiment 1 only. Hence, the different transfer patterns suggest that LWPC effects and sequential modulations arise from different mechanisms. Moreover, the observation of transfer supports an account of LWPC effects in terms of list-wide cognitive control, while being at odds with accounts in terms of stimulus–response (contingency) learning and item-specific control

Punishment sensitivity predicts the impact of punishment on cognitive control

Cognitive control theories predict enhanced conflict adaptation after punishment. However, no such effect was found in previous work. In the present study, we demonstrate in a flanker task how behavioural adjustments following punishment signals are highly dependent on punishment sensitivity (as measured by the Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS) scale): Whereas low punishment-sensitive participants do show increased conflict adaptation after punishment, high punishment-sensitive participants show no such modulation. Interestingly, participants with a high punishment-sensitivity showed an overall reaction time increase after punishments. Our results stress the role of individual differences in explaining motivational modulations of cognitive control

L’aide personnalisée à l’école primaire en france : quels formation continue et axes de pilotage développer pour favoriser la réussite de tous les élèves ?

International audienceIn order to avoid underperformance, school hours in French primary schools have been modified and reorganized and special education classes for students with difficulties put into place. Every school teacher will now bring customized help to small groups of pupils for two hours a week, outside the 24 school hours. This plan, which results in the personalized care of academic difficulties outside class time, aims at modifying teachers’ practices. Based on a qualitative study, the examination of these new practices and relationships, resulting from customized help at primary school, led to recommendations regarding teachers’ training and school management.Afin de lutter contre l’échec scolaire, l’organisation du temps scolaire à l’école primaire en France a été modifiée et des heures d’aide ont été dédiées aux enfants en difficulté. Tous les professeurs des écoles assurent deux heures d’aide personnalisée par semaine, en dehors des 24 heures de classe, à des petits groupes d’élèves. Ce dispositif, induisant une prise en charge individualisée de la difficulté en dehors de la classe, est susceptible de modifier les pratiques des enseignants. Sur la base d’une étude qualitative, les nouvelles pratiques et relations découlant de l’aide personnalisée à l’école primaire ont été étudiées et des préconisations en termes de formation des enseignants et de pilotage des écoles ont été proposées

Is conflict adaptation an illusion?

Conflict adaptation theory is one of the most popular theories in cognitive psychology. The theory argues that participants strategically modulate attention away from distracting stimulus features in response to conflict. Although results with proportion congruent, sequential congruency, and similar paradigms seem consistent with the conflict adaptation view, some researchers have expressed scepticism. The paradigms used in the study of conflict adaptation require the manipulation of stimulus frequencies, sequential dependencies, time-on-task regularities, and various other task regularities that introduce the potential for learning of conflict-unrelated information. This results in the unintentional confounding of measures of conflict adaptation with simpler learning and memory biases. There are also alternative accounts which propose that attentional adaptation does occur, but via different mechanisms, such as valence, expectancy, or effort. A significant (and often heated) debate remains surrounding the question of whether conflict adaptation exists independent of these alternative mechanisms of action. The aim of this Research Topic is to provide a forum for current directions in this area, considering perspectives from all sides of the debate

Ariane 5-ALF: an HW/SW Architecture driven Data Handling System evolution

International audienceIn the coming years, the Ariane 5 On-Board-Computer (OBC) will handle missions and performances enhancements together with the need for significantly reducing costs and the replacement of obsolescent components. The OBC evolution is naturally driven by these factors, but also needs to consider the SW system compliance. Indeed, it would be a major concern that the necessary change of the underlying HW should imply new development of the flight software, mission database and ground control system. The Ariane 5 SW uses ADA language, which enables verifiable definition of the interfaces and provides a standardized level of the real-time behavior. To enforce portability, it has a layered architecture that clearly separates application SW and data from the lower level software. In addition, the on-board mission data is managed thanks to the extraction of an image of the systems database located in a structured memory area (the exchange memory). Used for all interchanges between the system application software and the launcher's subsystems and peripherals, the exchange memory is the virtual view of the Ariane 5 system from the flight SW standpoint. Thanks to these early architectural and structural choices, portability on future hardware is theorycally guaranteed, whenever the exchange memory data structures and the service layer interfaces remains stable. The ALF working group has defined and manufactured a mock-up that fulfils these architectural constraints with a completely new on-board computer featuring improvements such as the microprocessor replacement as well as an advanced integrated I/O controller for access to the system data bus. Lower level SW has been prototyped on this new hardware in order to fulfill the same level of services as the current one while completely hiding the underlying HW/SW implementation to the rest of the system. Functional and performance evaluation of this platform consolidated at system level will show the potential benefits and the limits of such approach. Ariane 5 Data Handling Subsystem The Ariane 5 Data Handling is part of the launcher's electrical system, which is required to remain operational in case of failure of any of its equipment. Additionally, the allowed autonomous reconfiguration time is limited, especially during the most critical mission phases. The Data Handling Subsystem has been therefore organised as dual redundant chain of sensors and actuators (Fig.1). The communication system (SdC for Système de Communication) is implemented with Mil-std-1553B standard components and is the only data link between the computer pool and the equipments. This computer system operates in a hot active/standby configuration: in nominal situation, the Master computer (OBC1) controls the communications on both buses and executes the flight software. The Backup computer (OBC2) monitors the bus traffic in parallel an

Early and late indications of item-specific control in a Stroop mouse tracking study

Published: May 17, 2018Previous studies indicated that cognitive conflict continues to bias actions even after a movement has been initiated. The present paper examined whether cognitive control also biases actions after movement initiation. To this end, we had participants perform a Stroop task in which we manipulated the item-specific proportion of (in)congruent trials (80% congruent vs. 20% congruent). Importantly, participants responded via mouse movements, allowing us to evaluate various movement parameters: initiation times, movement times, and movement accuracy. Results showed that mouse movements were faster and more accurate during congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. Moreover, we observed that this congruency effect was larger for 80% congruent compared to 20% congruent items, which reflects itemspecific cognitive control. Notably, when responses were initiated very fast ± rendering virtually no time for stimulus processing before movement onset ± this item-specific control was observed only in movement times. However, for relatively slow initiated responses, item specific control was observed both in initiation and in movement times. These findings demonstrate that item-specific cognitive control biases actions before and after movement initiation.This work was supported by the Special Research Fund of Ghent University (BOF) (grant number: BOF13/24j/080). MFLR was supported in part by the Research Foundation ± Flanders (FWO) as a Pegasus Marie Curie Fellow (grant number: 1262214N) and by a BOF postdoctoral fellowship (grant number: BOF15/PDO/135). ELA was supported by the FWO (grant number: 12C4715N)

L’impact du cadre législatif sur le taux de syndicalisation des intérimaires au Québec et en France

L’industrie du travail intérimaire a connu une expansion remarquable au cours des dernières décennies. Le présent article a pour but de comparer la situation des travailleurs intérimaires au Québec et en France et d’expliquer les causes de leur très faible taux de syndicalisation. Pour ce faire, nous ferons les portraits schématiques de l’industrie de l’intérim, décrirons les cadres réglementaires qui régissent le travail intérimaire, examinerons certaines caractéristiques des régimes de représentation collective et analyserons les conditions dans lesquelles s’exerce le syndicalisme des intérimaires dans chacun de ces pays. Si les caractéristiques propres au travail intérimaire rendent difficiles l’organisation et la mobilisation syndicale de cette catégorie de travailleurs en raison de leur dispersion au sein d’une multitude d’entreprises utilisatrices, le très faible taux de présence syndicale dans cette industrie découle également d’autres facteurs spécifiques à chacun de ces pays et que nous tâcherons d’identifier.The temporary placement industry has seen remarkable growth both in France and in Quebec over the past few decades. Interim workers hired by temporary work agencies to provide work services within end user businesses have seen an increase in their ranks over the past twenty years. However, if French and Quebec interim workers work within totally different legal systems, they nevertheless have one trait in common: these workers are not significantly unionized within the temporary work agencies.Our hypothesis is that this situation is the result of characteristics which are inherent to interim work and which make the union mobilization and organization of this category of worker difficult; these workers are scattered throughout many end user businesses. In order to verify the accuracy of this hypothesis, we will present an overview of this industry for the two countries, describe the legal frameworks which govern interim work, study certain characteristics of collective representation schemes, and will analyse the conditions under which the unionism of interim workers in Quebec and in France takes place. If the characteristics inherent to interim work make it effectively difficult to mobilize and unionize this type or worker, the very low level of union presence within the industry is a result of certain features specific to each of the two countries. In Quebec, the lack of unionization within temporary placement agencies is primarily the result of legal considerations, which reveal the inherent limitations of the collective representation already in place, whereas in France, the very low level of unionization can be explained by many factors which are not obviously legal in nature.Even though the interim industry is clearly more developed in France than in Quebec, there are wide spread similarities in this industry’s key features within the two countries. In both cases, one can find the same main industry players in the placement worker industry, who hire a major pool of young workers, mostly male, to carry out duties normally requiring few qualifications. The industry is thriving because it allows end-user industries to gain major savings in labour costs because they incur no selection, training or recruitment costs for their personnel, do not pay any indemnities in case of lay-offs and do not need to pay higher wages for workers as they gain seniority.As far as a regulatory framework for the industry is concerned, France has been quite interventionist in bringing in legislation since the beginning of the 1970s in order to attempt to limit the growth of the interim employment industry. If France has clearly failed on this account, it has nonetheless been able to put into place a legal framework so as to support and control industrial practices and to protect interim workers from abusive practices to which they might otherwise fall victim. In Quebec, legislators have neglected to implement the various recommendations which have been suggested by the many experts who have studied the question. As a result, the relative uncertainty as to the true employer of interim workers continues, and this category of worker rarely enjoys the same benefits as do regular salaried workers at end user companies.The collective representation programs in place in Quebec and in France are completely different from one other. France’s system, unlike Quebec’s, is highly centralized, and is based on union pluralism, and does not allow for payroll union dues contributions or for the negotiation of mandatory union membership clauses. The French collective system applies to all paid workers in a specific area of the economy, or a profession, whether they are unionized or not. French legislation contains original wording making it possible to adapt the collective representation scheme to the specific situations of interim workers. On the other hand, in Quebec, the unionization of interim workers within temporary work businesses is practically impossible because there are too many major legal obstacles linked to with the particular characteristics of the collective representation agreement.However, even though Quebec is the most unionized region in North America with a unionization rate of 41.4% in 2003, there was no accreditation in Quebec for a “temporary work agency” or a “placement agency.” This situation can be explained, in particular, by the fact that the courts generally consider the end user enterprises as the true employers of interim workers as far as the “Labour Code” is concerned, and also because of the inherent difficulty in setting up an appropriate bargaining unit because the employees are scattered among many user businesses.In France, only 2.5% of interim workers are unionized. The reasons for this very low degree of union presence in the temp placement industry are very different than in Quebec. In fact, temporary workers do not run into any legal obstacles when they wish to unionize within temporary businesses, and they have little to gain from unionization in terms of improvement in working conditions since nine out of ten benefit from “branch agreements” negotiated by major unions. This low rate of unionization is the result of a combination of several factors. Firstly, the central features of interim employment make unionization and mobilization difficult and cumbersome. Secondly, unions in France are historically absent from SMBs, to the extent that it is difficult for them to make inroads into these new workspaces in the absence of their traditional militant base. In the end, one can wonder if the deep and generalized unionization crisis in France is not one of the main reasons which might help to explain the very low level of French unionism in this field.In order to become established in the interim sector, Quebec union organizations must definitely mobilize to make the necessary demands to the government so as to make the proper legislative changes since the current laws in Quebec are totally unadapted to the reality of this type of salaried workers. On the other side of the Atlantic, if French unions wish to increase significantly their membership, especially in the interim sector, they must try to improve their image, rethink their practices, become closer to workers, and adapt their collective action to the new realities of the workplace.La industria del trabajo interino ha conocido una expansión remarcable durante las últimas décadas. El presente artículo tiene por objetivo de comparar la situación de los trabajadores interinos en Québec y en Francia y explicar las causas de su bajo nivel de sindicalización. Para esto, haremos un retrato esquemático de la industria de la interinidad, describiremos los marcos reglamentarios que rigen el trabajo interino, examinaremos ciertas características de los regímenes de representación colectiva y analizaremos las condiciones en las cuales se ejerce el sindicalismo de los trabajadores interinos en cada país. Si las características propias al trabajo interino hacen difíciles la organización y movilización sindical de esta categoría de trabajadores en razón de su dispersión dentro de una multitud de empresas usuarias, el bajo nivel de presencia sindical en esta industria deriva así mismo de otros factores específicos de cada uno de estos países, los cuales nos encargeremos de identificar