Mapping the signed language lexicon: How are signs organized in the mind?
2022-05-24 11:00 - 12:00 (Europe/Paris) | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Dr. Zed Sevcikova Sehyr
San Diego State University
webpage: https://www.zedsehyr.com/publications.html

TBA
2022-05-30 12:00 - 13:30 | via zoom
Marlou Rasenberg (Radboud University)
Abstract: TBA
Where: Zoom link https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/2515421853

Retraite de l'ILCB
2022-06-13 09:30 - 2022-06-15 17:00

TBA
2022-06-13 12:00 - 13:30 | via zoom
Deniz Tahiroğlu (Boğaziçi University)
Abstract: TBA
Where: Zoom link https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/2515421853

Neural systems underlying auditory categorization
2022-06-17 14:00 - 15:00 | salle A003 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-enProvence, 13100, France
Dr. Bhareth Chandrasekaran
Abstract: My program of research uses a systems neuroscience approach to study the computations, maturational constraints, and plasticity underlying behaviorally relevant auditory signals like speech. Speech signals are multidimensional, acoustically variable, and temporally ephemeral. A significant computational challenge in speech perception (and more broadly, audition) is categorization, that is, mapping continuous, multidimensional, and variable acoustic signals into discrete, behavioral equivalence classes. Despite the enormity of this computational challenge, native speech perception is rapid and automatic. In contrast, learning novel speech categories is effortful. In this talk, I elucidate mechanisms underlying how novel speech categories are acquired and represented in the mature brain. I will demonstrate that (1) neural representations of novel speech categories can arise in the associative auditory cortex within a few hundred training trials of sound-to-category training, (2) pre-attentive signal reconstruction in the early auditory system is subject to experience-dependent plasticity, and (3) the robustness of structural and functional connectivity within a sound-to-reward cortico-striatal stream relates to learning outcome. Finally, I will discuss ongoing experiments that leverage neurobiology to design optimal behavioral training and targeted neuromodulation interventions.

About the speaker: Dr. Chandrasekaran serves as a Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at The University of Pittsburgh. He earned his Ph.D. in Integrative Neuroscience from Purdue University in 2008, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University before joining the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. He is the recipient of Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2014, the Editor’s award for best research article in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, the Psychonomics Early Career award in 2016, and the Society for Neurobiology of Language Early Career Award in 2018. Dr. Chandrasekaran has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (Speech). Over the last two decades, his lab has leveraged cutting-edge multimodal neuroimaging methods and computational modeling approaches to develop a sophisticated understanding of how sounds are represented and categorized in the human brain. His approach is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary, integrating across fields of communication sciences and disorders, neuroscience, linguistics, psychology, engineering, and otolaryngology. His laboratory is currently supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

TBA
2022-06-20 08:00 - 17:00 | via zoom
Raquel Fernández (University of Amsterdam)
Abstract: TBA
Where: Zoom link https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/2515421853

TBA
2022-07-11 08:00 - 17:00 | via zoom
Rory T. Devine (University of Birmingham)
Abstract: TBA
Where: Zoom link https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/2515421853

Prosody as a beacon for understanding a speaker's stance and intentions
2022-09-27 11:00 - 12:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Marc D. Pell, de l’Université McGill
Prof. Pell’s research investigates how adults communicate their emotions, attitudes, or other social intentions while speaking, to better understand the social-pragmatic context of spoken language.
Much of his work focuses on the effects of the human voice during pragmatic language processing and in social cognition. Members of his lab are exploring the neurocognitive basis of vocal communication, how this system is influenced by socio-cultural factors, and how vocal communication is influenced by acquired disease of the brain (e.g., Parkinson’s disease, repetitive head injury). Behavioural paradigms, acoustic analysis, neuroinvestigative techniques (ERPs, fMRI), and neuropsychological assessments of brain-damaged adults are being used to test these ideas.

Laboratory and field research - My experience with capuchin monkeys
2022-10-05 18:00 - 19:00 | Théâtre Antoine Vitez, 29 Av. Robert Schuman, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Elisabetta Visalberghi, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie del Consiglio Nazionale delle
Ricerche, Roma Italia.

Abstract: The Swiss primatologist Hans Kummer demanded a strong interchange between laboratory and field research. In fact, it is often the case that the field researcher has questions that only proper experiments can answer, or that the laboratory researcher reaches conclusions whose correct interpretation requires field observations. I used both approaches to understand the behavior of capuchin monkeys and I also bridged them by carrying out field experiments,. Here, I will illustrate how my colleagues and I proceeded in exploring the issues of flexible tool use and social learning and discuss how much easier, for laymen and scientists as well, is to accept something that can be easily seen (i.e., tool use) than something that is not so evident (as it is in the case of “feeble” social biases).

Language in the brain and algorithms.
2022-10-07 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Jean-Rémi KING : Chercheur à l’Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris et Meta AI.
It took less than five years for AI to revolutionize the field of natural language processing. Can the resulting algorithms help us understand this complex cognitive ability? Here, we develop state-of-the-art language models and compare them to the adult human brain. To do so, we are integrating large-scale datasets of magneto/electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and intracranial recordings while individuals read or listen to natural sentences. Our analyses demonstrate systematic similarities between AI models and the brain, which allow us to (1) efficiently decode speech from brain activity and (2) delineate the location and temporal course of the hierarchy of language representations. Overall, these studies show how the interface between AI and neuroscience sheds new light on the computations at the heart of human language.

formation NIRS/EEG
2022-10-19 08:00 - 2022-10-21 18:00 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
PROGRAMME FORMATION ACCOMPAGNEMENT PRISE EN MAIN fNIRS – EEG

JOUR 01 : Les Bases théoriques de la technique NIRS / EEG

La différence entre Technique (besoins) et Technologie (solutions)
Introduction par cadrage des deux techniques
Les différentes techniques spectroscopiques (NIRS) et les différentes techniques d’électrophysiologie.
L’onde électromagnétique

Le photon e sa double nature corpusculaire et d’onde
L’interaction de l’onde EM avec la matière

Diffusion et Absorbance

La loi de Lambert-Beer et la loi de Lambert-Beer Modifiée
La propagation de l’onde EM dans le milieu

Le signal NIRS et ses différences / similitudes avec le signal EEG

Les origines physiologiques et anatomiques du signal NIRS vs EEG

Couplage neuro-vasculaire
Potentiel d’action

Résolution temporelle et spatiale

Le traitement du signal NIRS vs EEG : fondamentaux

Les artefacts de mouvement
Les contaminations environnementales
Les contaminations physiologiques
L’évolution du SNR (signal noise ratio) et l’erreur
L’extraction de la composante Corticale – Neuronale – Evoquée ou du PE

Méthode UNIVARIATE (NIRS)
Méthode MULTIVARIATE (NIRS)

JOUR 02 – 03 : La solution technologique NIRX / BRAIN PROUCTS

Explication des components de l’hardware et installation : NIRSCOUT / actiCHamp Plus
Prise en main du logiciel d’enregistrement (NIRSTAR – BRAIN VISION RECORDER)
Diagnostic hardware
Optimisation du signal NIRS / EEG
Intégration dans LSL et synchronisation multi signal
Prise en main du logiciel de Montage design : NIRSITE (pour la NIRS)
Création du casque et qualité du signal (testé sur adulte)
Visualisation du signal
Hands-on

Typology of multilinguals' languages and its relation to brain and cognition
2022-11-18 12:00 - 13:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Olga Kepinska : Universität Wien
Learning and using additional languages has been time and again shown to be related to functional and structural changes to the brain. One aspect of multilingualism that has not been examined systematically so far is the typology of multilinguals’ languages: Do differences and similarities between languages multilinguals know contribute to the development of their cognition and brain? In this talk, I will discuss a methodology for describing the continuum of multilingual language experience that accounts for typological distance. We applied it in two studies with groups with diverse language backgrounds. In the first, we investigated n = 162 5-6-year-olds with various language backgrounds on a monolingual-to-quintilingual continuum. Overlaps in lexical distances between participants’ languages were found to be related to aspects of their dominant-language lexical knowledge and to brain activation patters during a dominant-language lexical task. In the second study, we looked at typological distance at the level of phonology and its relation to brain structure. In particular, we investigated how neuroanatomical indices describing the transverse temporal gyrus (TTG, cortical structure housing early auditory cortex) were related to cross-linguistic phonological information of n = 136 adult participants exposed to between 1 to 7 languages. We found that language experience with phonologically distant languages was associated with cortical thickness of the second TTG. These results refine our understanding of the neural underpinnings of multilingual language experience and will be discussed in the larger context of genetic versus environmental influences on the brain.

Towards a computational neurophysiology of covert auditory processing in health and disease
2022-12-09 12:00 - 13:00 | SALLE 15-409, Université Aix-Marseille 3 Pl. Victor Hugo,, Marseille, 13003, France
Le lunch talk Jean-Julien Aucouturier, est annulé en raison des perturbations dans les transports.
Nous sommes sincèrement désolé pour cette annulation de dernière minute.
Bien à vous
Etienne Thoret
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jean-Julien Aucouturier
Abstract: The past 10 years have seen the emergence in the cognitive neuroscience community of a novel class of ‘data-driven’ methods inspired by psychophysical reverse-correlation, which allow researchers to model a participant’s behavioral responses to arbitrarily generated visual or auditory stimuli (Adolphs et al. 2016). Taking the example of some of our recent results on the perception of speech prosody (Ponsot et al., PNAS 2018; Goupil et al. Nature Communications 2021), I will show how to extend these new methodologies to the analysis of neurophysiological data, in order to identify the sensory mechanisms that underly covert auditory processing in both healthy participants, stroke and coma patients.
Bio: Jean-Julien Aucouturier was trained at SONY Computer Science Laboratories with François Pachet and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (2006). JJ has then held several postdoctoral positions in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Tokyo with Takashi Ikegami and at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute with Kazuo Okanoya. After a decade at IRCAM in Paris where he directed the ERC-funded CREAM music neuroscience team, he is now Directeur de recherche CNRS (equiv. Full Professor) at the FEMTO-ST Institute (CNRS/Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté) in Besançon, France. His research program in FEMTO-ST is based on data-driven, system-science approaches to clinical neurophysiology, with a focus on the auditory/speech modality, and health technology applications in neurology and psychiatry. Lab website: https://neuro-team-femto.github.io

Séminaire & Soutenance HDR Isabelle Dautriche
2023-01-13 10:00 - 18:30 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
10H Judit Gervain (University of Padoa, Italy & CNRS)
How do infants represent speech: the developmental origins of the embedded neural oscillations model
The proposal (Giraud & Poeppel 2012) that a hierarchy of embedded neural oscillations support speech and language processing in the brain has received ample evidence in adults. However, the developmental orgins of such a neural architecture remain to a large extent unknown. The talk will present EEG data from newborns and older infants showing that neural oscillations are already in place early in development and are shaped by prenatal and postnatal experience.
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11H Coffee break
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11H30 Luca Bonatti (University Pompeu Fabra, Spain)
The role of logic in infant cognition

Do infants have a logic in their mind, and what role could it have in their cognitive system? David Hume argued that no novel content can arise by simply inspecting ‘relations of ideas’ — what we would now call logic, but only by knowing ‘matters of fact’ – objects, events, causal relations. This creates a puzzle: how is it possible that a system that adds no novel knowledge be useful to our cognition of the world? I will argue that the puzzle is a bit less puzzling if one thinks that knowledge is not acquired not only by adding novel information, but also by reducing uncertainty. I will present experiments with adults and infants suggesting that elementary logical processes are indeed spontaneously triggered in different contexts, and precisely serve the role of reducing uncertainty by eliminating possibilities.
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12H30 Lunch ILCB
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14H Soutenance HDR, Isabelle Dautriche (CNRS & Aix-Marseille University)
How children learn the meaning of words
One central task in most linguistic theory is to provide an account of the acquisition of language: What kind of machine in its initial state, supplied with what kinds of input, could acquire a natural language in the way that infants of our species do? This question is usually confined to the acquisition of phonology and syntax, leaving vocabulary aside. After all, words must be learnt by noticing the real-world contingencies for their use. No other theory could explain why English children learn to associate the sound sequence /ˈbɛtə/ to the meaning “better” and Turkish children to “worse”. I argue that focusing on distributional or statistical abilities provides an incomplete picture of word learning as it fails to account for how learning occurs, what kind of knowledge learners bring into the word learning problem and what properties of language may facilitate it. I will present experimental and computational work that suggest that 1) children are active learners, able to combine and weigh several sources of information while learning the meaning of words; 2) that the vocabulary of natural languages has evolved to be more learnable by infants and 3) that infants come equipped with non-linguistic biases that guide their learning, some of which may be shared with other species.
Committee:
Jennifer Culbertson, University of Edinburgh
Balthasar Bickel, University of Zurich
Luca Bonatti, University Pompeu Fabra
Judit Gervain, University of Padoa & CNRS
Noël Nguyen, Aix-Marseille Université
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17H Apéro

Neural encoding of speech sounds in neonates and infants: developmental trajectory and modulating factors
2023-01-20 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Carles Escera
(1)Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Barcelona,
(2)Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona,
(3) Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu (IRSJD), Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona
Sites:
www.ub.edu/brainlab
http://www.neurociencies.ub.edu/the-auditory-motor-emotional-and-numerical-brain/
https://www.irsjd.org/ca/recerca/28/neurociencia-cognitiva

ABSTRACT
Infants master their native language with remarkable ease, following a common developmental trajectory across different languages and cultures. There is ample consensus on critical behavioral attainments at given time points during development, such as cooing (1-4 months), babbling (6-10 months) and uttering the first words (12 months). Yet, the underlying neural underpinnings of these language attainments are poorly understood. The acquisition of spoken language requires a sophisticated neural machinery to disentangle the fine-grained spectro-temporal acoustic features differentiating speech sounds. This neural machinery is partially functional in utero, from the 27th gestational week, and keeps its natural maturation processes under genetic, biological, nutritional and environmental influences. From the very same moment of birth, the baby is exposed to a much richer acoustic environment (the mother’s bomb behaves as low-pass filter), fostering rapid experience-dependent plastic changes in the neural encoding of complex sound features, that I will argue, support early language acquisition.
In my talk I will discuss the results of a series of studies carried out in my laboratory with the Frequency-Following Response (FFR), a non-invasive scalp-recorded auditory evoked potential that reflects compound phase-locked neural activity elicited to the spectrotemporal components of the acoustic signal, along the entire auditory hierarchy. These studies have so-far allowed us to establish the standards for recording the neonatal FFR in a hospital routine, to show that fundamental frequency (F0) encoding is adult-like at birth whereas temporal-fine structure encoding shows a striking maturation at the age of one month, to continue to develop up to the age of 6 months, and that fetal conditions challenging normal fetal growth, such as fetal growth restriction of fetal overweight, result in compromised neural encoding of F0 at birth. Furthermore, our results show that the prenatal exposure to environmental music –and to a mono/bilingual acoustic environment- during pregnancy, fosters the neural encoding of speech sounds (F0) at birth. Altogether, these result support the FFR as a powerful to investigate the neural underpinnings of early language acquisition.
Funding. Project PID2021-122255NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ FEDER, UE; Fundación Alicia Koplowitz; 2022AR-IRSJDCdTorres; ICREA Acadèmia.

Workshop sur le jeu
2023-01-23 09:30 - 2023-01-24 17:30
Evénement organisé par les étudiants de Master de Sciences cognitives sur le thème du jeu
Lundi 23 janvier
9h30 -10h30 Elisabeta Palagi (Primatologie, Università di Pisa)
10h30-11h00 Pause Café
11h00-12h00 Laurent Perrinet (Neurosciences Computationnelles, CNRS – Aix-Marseille Université)
12h00-13h00 Thierry Chaminade (Neurosciences Cognitives,CNRS, Aix-Marseille,)
Déjeuner
14h00-15h00 Gilles Brougère (Sciences de l’Education,Université Paris 13, EXPERICE)
15h00-16h00 Swann pichon (Department of Psychology at the University of Geneva)
16h00-16h30 Pause Café
16h30- 17h30 Table Ronde

Mardi 24 janvier
9h30-10h30 Laurent Sébastien Fournier (Anthropologie,Université cote d’Azur, IDEMEC)
10h30-11h00 Pause Café
11h00-12h00 Beatrice Alescio (Psychologie, Université Aix-Marseille, LNC)
12h00-13h00 Grégoire Borst (Psychologie du développement, Université Paris-Descartes
13h00-16h30 Buffet- Démonstrations- Atelier
Centre de Réalité Virtuelle de la Méditerranée ; ExoStim ; NatulPad ; PlayTime ; Terre Ludique ; ABFC Consulting Formation ; The Magic Box

Stimulating speech: auditory-motor interactions in perception and production
2023-02-03 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Kate WATKINS Professeure à l’Université d’Oxford
I will describe a series of experiments employing non-invasive brain stimulation in combination with measures of brain function, which explore how motor-to-sensory and sensory-to-motor interactions can be modulated during speech perception and production tasks.
To study the role of the motor cortex in speech perception, we use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily disrupt the motor cortex representations of the articulators. We then record the effects of this disruption on speech perception using behaviour, EEG and MEG. We found that the motor cortex contributes to early stages of speech processing in the auditory cortex but not to processing of non-speech stimuli. The early effects are left-lateralised and can be fine-tuned by attention. We recently explored these lateralised effects further using perception of lexical tones in Mandarin and non-tonal language speakers. The effect of speech motor cortex disruption is left-lateralised for tone perception in Mandarin speakers and right-lateralised for non-tonal language speakers.
We have also explored the effects of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over speech motor cortex and the cerebellum on speech adaptation to a formant perturbation suggesting different contributions from these regions to the adaptation process.
Taken together our work demonstrates the strength of brain stimulation methods especially when used in combination with other measures. The work presented confirms the importance of interactions between motor and sensory systems that are necessary for both speech perception and production.

AFFECTIVE FACTORS AND EMOTIONS IN SECOND LANGUAGE EDUCATION
2023-03-02 10:30 - 12:00 | Campus Saint-Jérome, 52 Av. Escadrille Normandie Niemen, Marseille, 13013, France
Dr. Mª del Carmen FONSECA MORA : Professor of Applied linguistics and language teacher training, Affective Language Learning Lab, University of Huelva, Spain
actualite_recherche_carmen-fonseca_v4

Neural dynamics of feedforward and feedback speech processing
2023-03-10 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Adeen Flinker, PhD, New York University, Grossman School of Medicine, Tandon School of Engineering
Speech production is a complex human function requiring continuous feedforward commands together with reafferent feedback processing. The cortical organization of these processes are largely characterized by dual stream models of speech (Hickok & Poeppel 2007, Rauschecker & Scott 2009), wherein Frontal cortex mainly serves as an articulatory network mapping feedforward commands. Leveraging human intracranial recordings, I will present a series of studies addressing the role of prefrontal cortex in processing feedforward and feedback speech commands in support of a mixed representation across frontal cortex. I will argue for a functional subdivision of precentral gyrus wherein the ventral division sends feedforward commands and serves as the source of a corollary discharge, while the dorsal division carries out auditory feedback processing of reafferent speech.

Timing, action, and language
2023-03-24 | IMéRA
Timing is essential for the smooth coordination of neural and motor processes involved in action execution. The brain’s ability to time actions is related to the integration of information across sensory modalities and involves generation of predictive signals to anticipate future events. Timing ability is essential for successful performance of movements in music, and dance, and for speech production and perception. Intelligible speech requires precise timing of movements of the articulators. In addition, the perception of timing cues in speech provides important information about meaning in language comprehension. Understanding the role of timing in action and language production and perception can provide us with a better understanding of the brain processes involved, how the brain integrates information across sensory and motor domains and, ultimately, may inform interventions aimed at improving performance across a range of contexts and in disorders.
To conclude Kate Watkin’s research project and resrearch residency at Iméra, the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) of AIx-Marseille University, Marie-Helene Grosbras, Jenny Coull and Kate Watkins are organising a workshop on the 24th March at Iméra to discuss the role of timing in the guidance of actions generally and in speech and language more specifically. The aim is to bring together local researchers who are tackling these topics from different perspectives, in the hope of fostering closer collaboration and developing innovative lines of research.
We are inviting 30 minute presentations from members of the Aix-Marseille community who are working on at least 2 of these 3 topics i.e. timing and action / time & language / action & language. If you are interested in presenting and/or attending please contact us by e-mail at kate.watkins@psy.ox.ac.uk. Lunch will be provided for confirmed participants.

Kate Watkins is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Dept. of Experimental Psychology and Tutorial Fellow in Psychology, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. She is a resident research Fellow at Iméra and Holder of the ILCB / Iméra chair.

Multimodality in social interaction
2023-04-03 09:00 - 2023-04-04 18:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
The goal of this meeting is to bring together researchers at various levels of their careers (PhD, postdoc, PIs) to engage in a two day interactive sessions on various theoretical and methodological problems confronted in the field of communication and social interactions in humans and nonhumans. What are the basic signals used in communication? How do signals interact with one another? When do signal combinations become multimodal or multicomponent? How do exchanges of such signals shape our social interactions? How do we (learn to) behaviourally coordinate such communicative exchanges? Is this coordination reflected upon intra- and inter-personal physiological as well as neurological measures? What are the challenges in collecting and annotating such data? How do we combine various methodologies and technologies (behavioural, neural, linguistic) to answer our questions? Bringing together a group of researchers from interdisciplinary backgrounds, who regularly deal with these challenges, we intend to create a shared space for interactive discussions leading us to finding solutions to our individual problems with the force of collective efforts.
We propose a two-day program including several talks as well as a comprehensive workshop to address these issues.
for more information

Treize Minutes Marseille
2023-04-04 17:00 - 20:30
Programme (https://treize.lis-lab.fr/).
Devenues un rendez-vous incontournable de la #culture scientifique à Marseille et dans la région, cet événement met en lumières les #conférences, nerveuses, variées, inattendues, présentées par des chercheurs et des chercheuses d’Aix-Marseille Université de toutes disciplines !
Le principe est simple : 6 interventions de 13 minutes chacune, suivies d’un échange de 13 minutes avec le public !
+ d’infos : https://url.univ-amu.fr/13-minutes-marseille-2023
Les petites capsules vidéo des intervenants 2023: https://vimeo.com/showcase/10235761

Journées de l’ILCB à Porquerolles
2023-04-11 08:00 - 2023-04-13 18:30
RETRAITE-ILCB-23-3

Apprentissage lexical chez les enfants en maternelle et en élémentaire: mécanismes en jeu et efficacité des méthodes d'interventions en classe
2023-05-03 10:00 - 11:00 | SALLE 9-051, Université Aix-Marseille Campus St Charles 3 Pl. Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003, France
Intervenante : Séverine Casalis, SCALab, Univ Lille & CNRS (pour plus d’infos : https://pro.univ-lille.fr/severine-casalis)
Abstract
L’objectif de l’exposé est de présenter de façon parallèle une synthèse de modèles et travaux expérimentaux conduits sur l’apprentissage lexical d’une part et d’études interventionnelles conduites en classe d’autre part. L’apprentissage de mots est conçu, théoriquement, de façon sensiblement différente, chez les très jeunes et jeunes enfants et chez les enfants d’âge maternelle. En conséquence, nous présenterons successivement les modèles de « fast mapping » (Chiat, 2001) rendant compte de l’apprentissage lexical chez le très jeune enfant et le modèle « Complementary System Account » (Lindsay & Gaskell, 2010) qui rend compte des mécanismes d’apprentissage lexical chez l’adulte et l’enfant plus âgé. Cette distinction entre mécanismes d’apprentissage lexical selon l’âge de l’enfant est également justifiée par le rôle que joue l’orthographe dans le développement du lexique, à la fois en termes de configuration lexicale et de type d’exposition. L’apprentissage de la lecture, avec notamment l’impact de l’orthographe et l’exposition aux textes écrits modifie également les interventions réalisées en classe, souvent basées sur les textes écrits à partir du cycle 3. Cette synthèse se conclura par les perspectives de recherche ouvertes par l’articulation entre les travaux de fondamentaux et les interventions en classe.
Participer par Zoom
https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/85283430679?pwd=[REDACTED]
ID de réunion : 852 8343 0679
Code secret : [REDACTED]

Voices in the head: diversity of endophasia framed in a neurocognitive model
2023-05-05 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Hélène LOEVENBRUCK : Directrice de Recherche à l’Université Grenoble Alpes
“I am not a man, I am Cantona.”
“I love football.”
As you silently read these quotes, can you hear Eric Cantona’s voice? Can you imagine his next sentence?
Inner speech, or endophasia, can take various formats depending on the individual or the situation. It can feel expanded, like a little voice in the head, or rather condensed. It can occur as a monologue or a dialogue. It can seem intentional or irruptive. Recent data on atypical covert verbal forms, such as auditory verbal aphantasia (reported lack of inner voice), verbal hyperphantasia (reported vivid inner voice), and auditory verbal hallucination, challenge theories that postulate a universal quality of endophasia. In ConDialInt, a neurocognitive model rooted in a predictive control theory, such forms can be accounted for by considering a gradual variation along three essential dimensions: condensation, dialogality and intentionality. The inner voice phenomenon is seen as an exaptation of the sensory predictions involved in the control of overt speech. Speech production is considered to be hierarchically controlled, from conceptualisation to articulation, via formulation, motor planning and programming. At each level, control is based on the comparison between initial input and prediction. Endophasia is viewed as an interruption in the speech production process. Condensed forms emerge when the interruption occurs early, before the formulation stage. Expanded forms, inner voices, recruit the full production process, interrupted only prior to articulation. Dialogal forms are taken to include indexical and perspective properties. Intentional forms are seen as rigorously monitored predictions, whereas unintentional forms are loosely monitored. Agency feeling is assumed to rely on the timing of initial and predicted signals. The ConDialInt model is compatible with neuroanatomical data obtained for a variety of inner speech situations. It also accounts for atypical endophasia. Verbal hyperphantasia vs aphantasia are explained by variation in the condensation dimension. Auditory verbal hallucinations are construed as unintentional dialogal endophasia bestowed with a lack of agency. These propositions have implications for levels of representation in theories of language processing and cognition in general.

Here the zoom link : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/87516300272?pwd=[REDACTED]
ID de réunion : 875 1630 0272
Code secret : [REDACTED]

Why we should care about the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex in language production
2023-06-02 11:00 - 17:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Stephanie Ries
Associate Professor, San Diego State University

The dorso-medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), including the supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas as well as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, has been a region of interest in studies of cognitive control and other areas of neuroscience for many years. Yet, traditional models of language production do not typically include this brain region, and its potential role in language and speech production has therefore only been more recently investigated. In this talk, I will review evidence from several research groups (including but not limited to my own) using fMRI, brain stimulation, and scalp and intracranial EEG in “monolinguals” and bilinguals with and without neurological damage that suggest that the dmPFC may play a bigger role than we previously had thought in language production. In particular, it seems likely involved in a response selection mechanism potentially taking place separately from lexical selection, in addition to speech monitoring. The implications of these findings for traditional cognitive models of language production will be discussed.

https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/83037452791?pwd=[REDACTED]
ID de réunion : 830 3745 2791
Code secret : [REDACTED]

Word learning in honor of Lila Gleitman: Perception of structure from language and world
2023-06-09 09:00 - 11:00 | Salle 9-050, Université Aix-Marseille Campus St Charles 3 Pl. Victor Hugo, Marseille, France
John Trueswell (Dept of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania)
Abstract: It is tempting to conclude that children learn the meanings of words by observing their circumstances of use (e.g., observing that the word “dog” often co-occurs with dog-sightings). If this is the case though, how do children ever learn the vast majority of the words that they know? Consider most of the words in this abstract, many of which a 3-year-old produces and understands: like “what”, “not”, “language”, “do”, “think”, “learn.” Can these words be learned by observation of their circumstances of use? There are no what-sightings that go with “what”, and no not-sightings that go with “not”; thinking-sightings often look like sleeping-sightings and sitting-sightings. How do children go about learning these “hard words” despite no explicit instruction? I will present research, some of which was done with my longtime collaborator Lila Gleitman, that is designed to answer these questions. I’ll focus on the unexpected role that word-to-world pairings nevertheless play in the learning of hard words. I’ll propose a framework for word-to-world mapping in which perception of the referent world itself offers us significant structure, and the syntactic structure we gather from the language is connected to these representations. This connection, and the structural representations on both sides of the word-to-world coin, allow us to see what we shouldn’t be able to see, and hear what we shouldn’t be able to hear. I’ll offer experimental evidence that our perception of the world includes rapid extraction of event structure, and hypothesize that this allows access to abstract relational meaning even in young children. These representations play an important role in understanding how situational contexts permit children to learn even the most abstract of terms, such as symmetrical predicates (e.g., the meaning of “equal”) and truth-functional negation (e.g., the meaning of “not”).

Interactive Robot Learning
2023-06-21 14:00 - 15:00 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Summary: In this talk, we focus on main methods and models enabling humans to teach embodied social agents such as social robots, using natural interaction. Humans guide the learning process of such agents by providing various teaching signals, which could take the form of feedback, demonstrations and instructions. This overview describes how human teaching strategies are incorporated within machine learning models. We detail the approaches by providing definitions, technical descriptions, examples and discussions on limitations. We also address natural human biases during teaching. We then present applications such as interactive task learning, robot behavior learning and socially assistive robotics. Finally, we discuss research opportunities and challenges of interactive robot learning.
Bio: Prof. Mohamed Chetouani is currently a Full Professor in signal processing and machine learning for human-machine interaction. He is affiliated to the PIRoS (Perception, Interaction et Robotique Sociales) research team at the Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics (CNRS UMR 7222), Sorbonne University (formerly Pierre and Marie Curie University). His activities cover social signal processing, social robotics and interactive machine learning with applications in psychiatry, psychology, social neuroscience and education. He was the coordinator of the ANIMATAS H2020 Marie Sklodowska Curie European Training Network (2018-2022). Since 2019, he is the President of the Sorbonne University Ethics Committee. He was involved in several educational activities including organization of summer schools. He is member of the EU Network of Human-Centered AI. He is General Chair of ACM ICMI 2023. He is in charge of the inclusion of Students with Disabilities for the Faculty of Science and Engineering of Sorbonne University.

Rob Hartsuiker
2023-07-10 11:00 - 12:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Titre à préciser

(Mis) alignment in alignment research :
2023-07-13 08:00 - 17:00
