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Background Certain populations are at high risk of experiencing a traumatic event and developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet, primary preventive interventions against PTSD are lacking. It is therefore crucial to identify pre-traumatic risk factors, which could be targeted with such interventions. Insomnia may be a good candidate, but studies on civilians are sparse. Furthermore, the mechanisms at stake in the relationship between pre-traumatic insomnia and PTSD symptoms are unclear. Methods This prospective population-based cohort study (n = 1,610) examined the relationship between insomnia symptoms at 32 weeks of pregnancy and childbirth-related PTSD (CB-PTSD) symptoms at eight weeks postpartum. Postnatal insomnia symptoms, prenatal psychological symptoms (depression, anxiety, PTSD, fear of childbirth), subjective birth experience (SBE) and birth medical severity were included as covariates in the analyses, which were based on a Piecewise Structural Equation Modelling approach. Results The relationship between prenatal insomnia and CB-PTSD symptoms was mediated by negative SBE and postnatal insomnia symptoms. All relationships involving insomnia symptoms had small or very small effect sizes. Limitations This study used self-report questionnaires. Postnatal insomnia and CB-PTSD symptoms were concurrently measured. Conclusion Prenatal insomnia symptoms may impair the ability to cope with a difficult birth experience and contribute to postnatal insomnia, a risk factor for CB-PTSD. Thus, prenatal insomnia symptoms may be a promising target for CB-PTSD primary preventive interventions, although other prenatal psychological symptoms could also be considered. Even beyond the perinatal context, future studies on pre-traumatic insomnia and PTSD should include post-traumatic insomnia as a covariate.

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OBJECTIVE: Although research has examined associations between socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and acute and chronic life stressors in depression, most studies have been conducted in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) populations. METHOD: We addressed this issue by interviewing 65 adults (55 women, M(age) = 37) living in Madagascar, a typical low- and middle-income country (LMIC). RESULTS: As hypothesized, women experienced more life stressors and depressive symptoms, on average, than men, as did those from lower (vs. higher) SES backgrounds. Additionally, lifetime stress exposure was associated with greater symptoms of depression, accounting for 19% of the variability in depressive symptom levels. These effects differed for acute vs. chronic and distal vs. recent stressors. Finally, stress exposure significantly mediated the relation between SES and gender on depressive symptoms, accounting for 24.0% to 70.8% of the SES/gender-depression association depending on stressor type. CONCLUSIONS: These data extend prior research by describing how social stratification and gender relate to lifetime stress exposure and depressive symptoms in a non-WEIRD population.

A recent study based on the SPoARC effect (spatial position association response codes) showed that culture heavily shapes cognition and more specifically the way thought is organized; when Western adults are asked to keep in mind a sequence of colors, they mentally organize them from left to right, whereas right-to-left reading/writing adults spatialize them in the opposite direction. Here, we investigate if the spontaneous direction of spatialization in Westerners can be reversed. Lists of five consonants were presented auditorily at a rate of 3 s per item, participants were asked to mentally organize the memoranda from right to left. Each list was followed by a probe. Participants had to indicate whether the probe was part of the sequence by pressing a "yes" key or a "no" key with the left or right index finger. Left/right-hand key assignment was switched after half of the trials were completed. The results showed a reverse SPoARC effect that was comparable in magnitude to the spontaneous left-to-right SPoARC effect found in a previous study. Overall, our results suggest that individuals can reverse the cultural direction of their thoughts.

What constitutes effective teaching of arithmetical skills in early school years is still uncertain. Finger use could play a crucial role in this acquisition, but some children do not use them spontaneously and studies would be necessary to know if it is possible to teach them. This research assesses the impact of a teacher-implemented intervention program to teach 5-year- to 6-year-old children to use their fingers in numerical tasks. Participants were 36 kindergarten pupils (16 girls, 20 boys; mean age 5 years, 5 months) from two classrooms. The research compares a program in which motor training and explicit teaching of finger use are promoted to represent numbers and to act on them, with a “business as usual” contrast group. Children were tested before and after the intervention with problem-solving. After the experimental training program, finger counting appears to be a good strategy because its frequency is positively linked to the scores in the problem-solving tasks. We showed a greater improvement in problem-solving following the finger use intervention, compared to the contrast group. Our results support the explicit teaching of finger use to build numerical representation and enhance the calculation skills of kindergarten students (age 5) in French schools.

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One of the main difficulties met in teaching Languages for Specialists of Other Disciplines (Lansod) is the heterogeneity of the learners’ levels. Handling a classroom is thus a challenge for teachers. In English, the improvement of both expression and comprehension competences, both written and spoken, depends on the knowledge of grammar, as shown by Ellis’s research (Second Language Acquisition). The project presented in this text (TACIT-Grammar) is part of the dynamic created in the universities in order to develop the use of digital technologies. The platform Tacit targets the evaluation and adaptive remediation of cross-disciplinary cognitive and linguistic competences. In this context, a module dedicated to English grammar is currently in progress to meet the specific needs of the Lansod. L’une des principales difficultés rencontrées dans le domaine des langues pour les spécialistes d’autres disciplines (Lansad) est l'hétérogénéité du niveau des apprenants. La gestion des enseignements est alors un défi pour les enseignant.e.s. En anglais, la maîtrise de la grammaire est une des composantes indispensables à l’amélioration des compétences d’expression et de compréhension, à l’écrit comme à l’oral, comme le montrent notamment les travaux d’Ellis (Second Language Acquisition). Le projet présenté dans ce texte s’inscrit dans la dynamique de développement de l’usage du numérique au sein des universités. Le portail Tacit vise à l’évaluation et à la remédiation adaptative des compétences cognitives et linguistiques transversales. Dans ce cadre, un module dédié à la grammaire anglaise est en cours de construction pour répondre aux besoins spécifiques des Lansad.

Purpose E-learning is part of instructional design and has opened a whole world of new possibilities in terms of learning and teaching. The purpose of this paper is to develop an adaptive e-learning platform that enhances skills from primary school to university learners. Two purposes converge here: a pedagogical one – offering new possibilities, especially in terms of teaching scenarios (blended learning); and a research one – confirming the effectiveness of an adaptive e-learning tool in the case of individualized cross-disciplinary competences, such as comprehension of implicit information in written texts (French). Design/methodology/approach The case study presented here concerns primary-school learners using the Implicit module of TACIT adaptive e-learning tool over the 2016-2017 academic year. Findings This paper gives a first positive answer to the effectiveness of such a tool in this specific context. This pedagogical effectiveness is more pronounced for low-level pupils, especially for girls and for older pupils (CM1/CM2, respectively, fourth/fifth grade). Originality/value In this case study, the module comes from an existing platform, created by the TACIT research group. The adaptive environment was created by using the Item Response Theory models and, more precisely, the Rasch model.

This paper argues that the two factors of valence and activation, commonly recovered from factor studies on emotion and mood inventories, are best represented within a single nonlinear model, than as two independent factors. Arguments are provided that, as valence goes from positive to negative value, activation increases then decreases, thus displaying a inverse-U shaped relationship. This model appears in good agreement with classical and well-established models of emotion and stress management (Lazarus (1999), Seligman (1972), Selye (1956)), while providing a more synthetic and integrated view. Psychometric arguments are given about why such a structure results in two factors using principal component analysis. The same arguments also explain why circular patterns of variables and person points commonly emerge in these analyses, and why they should be regarded as statistical artifacts. The new model has important consequences on the way emotional states should be measured and a practical assessment procedure is detailed.

International audience; In 2011, van Dijck and Fias described a positional SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) effect: the SPoARC (Spatial-Positional Association of Response Codes). To-be-remembered items (e.g., numbers, words) presented centrally on a screen seemed to acquire a left-to-right spatial dimension. If confirmed, this spatialization could be crucial for immediate memory theories. However, given the intricate links between visual and spatial dimensions, this effect could be due to the visual presentation (on a computer screen), which could have probed the left-to-right direction of reading/writing. To allow a generalization of this effect, we adapted van Dijck and Fias's (2011) task using an auditory version of Sternberg's paradigm. Lists of five consonants were auditorily presented at a rate of 3 s/item. A SPoARC effect was observed. The consequences are discussed first from an immediate memory perspective, putting forward the view that order could be coded through spatialization, and then in terms of similarities between SPoARC and SNARC.

An item response model is proposed for the analysis of continuous response formats in an item response theory (IRT) framework. With such formats, respondents are asked to report their response as a mark on a fixed-length graphical segment whose ends are labeled with extreme responses. An interpolation process is proposed as the response mechanism in this situation, from which the authors show that a beta distribution on the response naturally follows. The two natural parameters of the beta are expressed as monotonic functions of person and item distance on some latent continuum. It is shown that a logistic expected response function results from a simple choice for these monotonic functions. A joint maximum likelihood estimation procedure is presented that performs well in a simulation study. An application on mood items is also presented, with very good fit properties.

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International audience; This study aims at studying the relationship between manual and digital representations and numerical skills through the drawing of a hand. Sixty-two children (ages from 4 years old to 5 years and 6 months old) were asked to draw a hand and to carry out 2 numerical tasks: first to produce 2 equivalent collections and then to use the order-irrelevance principle. The statistical implicative analysis shows that more elaborated graphic strategies more strongly imply success producing 2 equivalent collections; Cette étude propose d’étudier les relations entre les représentations manuelles et digitales et les habiletés numériques au travers du dessin de la main. Soixante-deux enfants âgés de 4 ans à 5 ans 6 mois ont reçu pour consigne de dessiner une main et de réaliser deux tâches numériques. La première consiste pour l’enfant à produire une collection de jetons identique à celle qui lui est proposée (tâche de correspondance terme à terme). La seconde tâche teste la maîtrise du principe de non pertinence de l’ordre. L’analyse montre que les stratégies graphiques les plus élaborées impliquent plus fréquemment une réussite à la tâche de correspondance terme à terme.

An unfolding model for continuous bounded responses is proposed, derived both from a hypothetical interpolation response mechanism and from the hypothesis of two opposite sources of item refusal being collapsed. These two sources of refusal are made explicit in a three-component Dirichlet response model and then collapsed to obtain a (two-component) beta response model. The two natural parameters of the beta are interpreted as acceptance and refusal parameters and expressed as functions of person-item distances on a latent continuum. The potentially bimodal shape of the beta is exploited to model chaotic response choices among ambivalent subjects.

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Dans sa celebre tâche de psychologie cognitive dite de « selection de carte », Wason (1966) presente au sujet 4 cartes. Chaque carte comporte un chiffre sur une face et une lettre sur l’autre. Les quatre faces apparentes montrent les symboles A, D, 4 et 7 respectivement. A propos de ces quatre cartes, on affirme que: « si une carte comporte une voyelle sur une face, alors elle comporte necessairement un nombre pair sur l’autre face » (fig. 3.1). Mais on demande au sujet de verifier que c’est bien le cas, sans exception, en procedant aux retournements de cartes necessaires et suffisants. Quelles cartes retourneriez-vous?

Dans un grand nombre de situations, les questions pratiques qui se posent au psychologue reviennent statistiquement a la comparaison de distributions, soit pour comparer deux ou plus de deux distributions empiriques, soit pour comparer une distribution empirique a une distribution theorique. Les distributions theoriques seront presentees et etudiees plus loin dans ce cours, et on s’interesse ici essentiellement a la comparaison des distributions empiriques.

Les donnees collectees en psychologie se presentent souvent sous la forme d’un tableau a double entree, ou les lignes symbolisent un ensemble d’objets ou d’individus equivalents sur lesquels on observe des caracteristiques appelees variables. Ces individus sont supposes extraits d’un ensemble plus vaste appele population. Pour des raisons historiques (les applications premieres de la statistique etaient demographiques), on continue a utiliser ce terme pour designer toute collection d’objets a etudier ayant des proprietes communes, qu’il s’agisse ou non de personnes. Ces objets sont appeles indifferemment « individus », « unites » ou « observations » statistiques. Dans certains contextes, il peut s’agir simplement de multiples mesures prelevees sur un seul individu. On continue pour des raisons historiques a parler de population dans ce cas, pour designer l’ensemble de toutes les mesures possibles.

Lors d’un seminaire au departement de psychologie de l’universite de Stanford en 1950, le mathematicien Albert Tucker propose l’enonce suivant: deux hommes, accuses d’etre complices dans quelque forfait, sont interroges separement par la police. Chacun est informe que, s’il denonce l’autre, il aura une recompense (et l’autre sera lourdement condamne). Par contre, s’ils se denoncent tous les deux, ils seront tous les deux condamnes, a une peine plus legere. Enfin, si aucun des deux ne trahit l’autre, la police sera obligee de les relâcher.

En 1996, en Angleterre, le couple Clark perdit son premier enfant, Christopher, a l’âge de 3 mois. La mere, Sally, etait la seule dans la maison au moment du deces. La mort fut attribuee a l’epoque au syndrome de mort subite du nourrisson. Un an plus tard, Sally eut un deuxieme enfant mais il mourut dans des circonstances tres semblables a l’âge de deux mois.

International audience; In this study, a personalization method (Guida, Tardieu, & Nicolas, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21: 862-896 2009) was applied to a free-recall task. Fifteen pairs of words, composed of an object and a location, were presented to 93 participants, who had to mentally associate each pair and subsequently recall the objects. A 30-s delay was introduced on half of the trials, the presentation rate was manipulated (5 or 10 s per item), and verbal and visuospatial working memory tests were administered to test for their effects on the serial curve. Two groups were constituted: a personalized group, for whom the locations were well-known places on their university campus, and a nonpersonalized group, for whom the locations did not refer to known places. Since personalization putatively operationalizes long-term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, Psychological Review, 102: 211-245 1995)-namely, the capacity to store information reliably and rapidly in long-term memory-and if we take a dual-store approach to memory, the personalization advantage would be expected to be greater for pre-recency than for recency items. Overall, the results were compatible with long-term working memory theory. They contribute to validating the personalization method as a methodology to characterize the contribution of long-term memory storage to performance in working memory tasks.

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Resume La notion de « dangerosite » prend actuellement une importance croissante au niveau de la Justice, les magistrats et les surveillants de prison etant ainsi amenes a devoir frequemment l’evaluer. Se pose alors la question de la signification attribuee par ces professionnels a la dangerosite. Les resultats des entretiens realises aupres de ces deux groupes ainsi qu’avec des citoyens revelent des representations plutot homogenes quant a l’individu dangereux mais fortement heterogenes en ce qui concerne les situations dangereuses. En confirmant l’existence de plusieurs dangerosites (sociale, penale et carcerale), ces resultats montrent aussi que toute evaluation de la dangerosite ne peut etre satisfaisante que si elle s’inscrit dans une approche a la fois clinique et sociale.

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The paper argues that the problem of estimating a “readiness-to-change” score for smokers from processes of change measures is closely related to dating problems in archaeology. It amounts to finding a joint ordination of both smokers (“sites”) and processes of change (“tools”) in a common space, so that smokers be located close to processes they use most, in some sense. Properties of Correspondence Analysis as a reciprocal averaging technique are first briefly summarized, and its capability of recovering nonlinear structures is recalled. Application to processes of change data in smoking cessation leads to a solution which first axis is interpreted as a cognitive-behavioral continuum. Processes are shown to be scaled in a way that is in good convergence with longitudinal data previously reported ( Prochaska et al., 1991 ), and subjects' locations to be significantly related to actual quitting. Finally, it is shown how new responses profiles could be projected on the obtained solution to get a practical estimation of probability to quit.

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A new model of change is proposed, based on the assumption that cognitive and behavioral processes of change basically follow inverse-U-shaped patterns of variation as smokers move toward effective change: Each process is first increasingly used, up to a maximum value, and then decreases. It is argued that such a model of data is properly dealt with by unfolding models specially designed for those cases. A theoretical foundation for an unfolding model of change is proposed, based on probabilistic reasoning first developed by D. Andrich and G. Luo (1993). An illustrative analysis on responses of 140 French smokers to C. C. DiClemente and J. O. Prochaska's (1985) Processes of Change Questionnaire is presented, which yields a very satisfactory unidimensional solution, along which items' locations are in convergence with previous longitudinal studies in the stage-of-change tradition and smokers' locations appear to be a good predictor of actual quitting. Numerous latent trait models for the measurement of attitudes and cognitive abilities have been proposed (Andrich, 1978b; Bock, 1972; Lord, 1952; Masters, 1982; Muraki, 1992; Samejima, 1969) that have expanded and sophisticated probabilistic response models initially proposed by Rasch (1960) in a tradition of psychological measurement that could be traced to Thurstone's (1927, 1928) seminal works. Extensions in the use of these models from structural traits measurement to longitudinal data analysis have been proposed (Fischer, 1989; Fischer & Parzer, 1991). In the structural equation modeling tradition, latent growth models are also available for the analysis of change (Duncan, Duncan, & Stoolmiller, 1994; Raykov, 1994). Those approaches, however, either assume a cumulative latent evolutionary process or require that repeated measures be available to estimate the (potentially nonlinear) growth function.

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