Suchergebnisse

Organe vital et aux performances inégalées parmi les autres espèces vivantes, le cerveau humain n'en finit pas de nous surprendre. Les progrès dans la connaissance de son fonctionnement au cours des dernières décennies ont été considérables. Mais il reste encore beaucoup à découvrir et à explorer, pour à la fois comprendre comment l'homme grandit, réfléchit, pense, apprend, s'adapte, ressent…, avancer sur les moyens d'améliorer le fonctionnement (notamment en matière d'apprentissage) du cerveau et d'en réparer les dysfonctionnements, quels qu'ils soient. C'est pourquoi la revue Futuribles a décidé de commencer cette année 2019 par un numéro très largement consacré au cerveau humain, et plus spécialement aux progrès des sciences cognitives, des neurosciences et de leurs apports en matière d'éducation et d'apprentissage. Cet article d'Olivier Houdé présente les apports — récents et sans doute encore trop limités — des recherches en neurosciences et sciences cognitives dans le domaine de l'éducation. L'auteur souligne notamment l'importance qu'ont eue les recherches sur le cerveau, grâce aux observations de son fonctionnement in vivo , dans la compréhension des mécanismes d'apprentissage des enfants. Il insiste en particulier sur les deux formes complémentaires d'apprentissage neurocognitif que sont l'automatisation et le contrôle par l'inhibition (ou « désautomatisation »). Il précise la façon dont elles se manifestent dans le cerveau et les systèmes de pensée qui les activent. Les avancées dans la compréhension de ces mécanismes ont ainsi ouvert de nouvelles pistes en sciences de l'éducation. S.D.

Abstract A fundamental question in developmental science is how brains with and without language compute numbers. Measuring young children's verbal reactions in France (Paris) and in England (Oxford), here we show that, although there is a general arithmetic ability for small numbers that is shared by monkeys and preverbal infants, the development of such initial knowledge in humans follows specific performance patterns, depending on what language the children speak.

Classic developmental studies have established that children's number conservation is often biased by misleading intuitions. However, the precise nature of these conservation errors is not clear. A key question is whether children detect that their erroneous conservation judgment is unwarranted. The present study focuses on this critical error sensitivity issue. Preschool children were given a classic version of a number conservation task in which an intuitively cued response conflicted with the correct conservation response and a control version in which this conflict was not present. After solving each version children were asked to indicate their response confidence. Results showed that in contrast with children who gave a correct conservation response, preschoolers who erred showed a sharp confidence decrease after solving the classic conflict problem. This suggests that nonconserving preschoolers detect that their response is questionable and are less ignorant about conservation than their well-documented errors might have previously suggested.

AbstractTracing the connections from brain functions to children's cognitive development and education is a major goal of modern neuroscience. We performed the first meta‐analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data obtained over the past decade (1999–2008) on more than 800 children and adolescents in three core systems of cognitive development and school learning: numerical abilities, reading, and executive functions (i.e. cognitive control). We ran Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta‐analyses to obtain regions of reliable activity across all the studies. The results indicate that, unlike results usually reported for adults, children primarily engage the frontal cortex when solving numerical tasks. With age, there may be a shift from reliance on the frontal cortex to reliance on the parietal cortex. In contrast, the frontal, temporo‐parietal and occipito‐temporal regions at work during reading in children are very similar to those reported in adults. The executive frontal regions are also consistent with the imaging literature on cognitive control in adults, but the developmental comparison between children and adolescents demonstrates a key role of the anterior insular cortex (AIC) with an additional right AIC involvement in adolescents.

Abstract Research on deductive reasoning in adolescents and adults has shown that errors in deductive logic are not necessarily due to a lack of logical ability but can stem from an executive failure to inhibit biases. Few studies have examined this dissociation in children. Here, we used a negative priming paradigm with 64 children (8–10 years old) to test the role of cognitive inhibition in syllogisms with belief‐bias effects. On trials where negative priming was predicted, results were as follows: For the first syllogism (A), the strategy 'unbelievable‐equals‐invalid' had to be inhibited. The logic of the syllogism led to affirming a conclusion inconsistent with one's knowledge of the world, such as 'All elephants are light.' For the second syllogism (B), one's real‐world knowledge and the syllogism's logic were congruent but the latter required affirming exactly what had been inhibited for A (i.e. that elephants are heavy). A negative priming effect on the A‐B sequence was reflected in a significant drop in reasoning performance on B. This supports the idea that during cognitive development, inhibitory control is required for success on syllogisms where beliefs and logic interfere.

AbstractInhibitory control (i.e., the ability to resist automatisms, temptations, distractions, or interference and to adapt to conflicting situations) is a determinant of cognitive and socio‐emotional development. In light of the discrepancies of previous findings on the development of inhibitory control in affectively charged contexts, two important issues need to be addressed. We need to determine (a) whether cool inhibitory control (in affectively neutral contexts) and hot inhibitory control (in affectively charged contexts) follow the same developmental pattern and (b) the degree of specificity of these two types of inhibitory control at different ages. Thus, in the present study, we investigated the developmental patterns of cool and hot inhibitory control and the degree of specificity of these abilities in children, adolescents and adults. Typically developing children, adolescents, and adults performed two Stroop‐like tasks: an affectively neutral one (Cool Stroop task) and an affectively charged one (Hot Stroop task). In the Cool Stroop task, the participants were asked to identify the ink color of the words independent of color that the words named; in the Hot Stroop task, the participants were asked to identify the emotional expression of a face independent of the emotion named by a simultaneously displayed written word. We found that cool inhibitory control abilities develop linearly with age, whereas hot inhibitory control abilities follow a quadratic developmental pattern, with adolescents displaying worse hot inhibitory control abilities than children and adults. In addition, cool and hot inhibitory control abilities were correlated in children but not in adolescents and adults. The present study suggests (a) that cool and hot inhibitory control abilities develop differently from childhood to adulthood – i.e., that cool inhibition follows a linear developmental pattern and hot inhibition follows an adolescent‐specific pattern – and (b) that they become progressively more domain‐specific with age.