Artificial Brains - The quest to build sentient machines The Cognitive Behavioral Miracle – Controlling your Emotions Most people who have never experienced a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) session, or at least read about it, tend to share the notion that what psychologists do is pretty much listen to your problems, sometimes offer advice and different points of view, and make you think about your feelings, actions, and emotions. In this popular view of therapy, the patient (or client) is a rather passive subject, and the therapist is the one doing the work. Personally, I don’t think there has been a more profound revolution in the study of human psychology as the cognitive behavioral revolution. I first became fascinated with CBT while translating and editing some course materials for the director of the CBT Institute in Ireland, Sylvia Buet. I then discovered that when one mentions behavioral, most people would think of Pavlov-style basic stimuli-response training; while CBT was in reality much more complex. In a nutshell Problem classification Proven results Conclusions References Dobson KS.
Les faux souvenirs implantés chez l’enfant sont-ils des souvenirs ? 20 février 2012 par Frank Arnould Chez l’enfant, les faux souvenirs implantés correspondraient bien à des distorsions de la mémoire. Ils ne seraient pas la conséquence de leur sensibilité aux influences sociales. Les psychologues Elizabeth Loftus et Jaqueline Pickrell ont été les premières à réussir expérimentalement l’implantation d’un faux souvenir autobiographique complet chez des adultes. Pour parvenir à ce résultat, les participants à leur étude ont été interrogés à plusieurs reprises à propos d’un évènement fictif qu’ils étaient censés avoir vécu pendant leur enfance. L’une des questions que soulève ce type d’étude est de savoir si les faux souvenirs implantés correspondent bien à des distorsions de la mémoire ou si les participants ne font que se soumettre à l’interviewer, sans croire une seconde à la réalité des détails qu’ils lui racontent. Cette situation expérimentale a été adaptée pour être employée dans le paradigme d’implantation de faux souvenirs. Références : Loftus, E.
Neuroscientists explore how longstanding conflict influences empathy for others (2/4 MIT postdoc Emile Bruneau has long been drawn to conflict - not as a participant, but an observer. In 1994, while doing volunteer work in South Africa, he witnessed firsthand the turmoil surrounding the fall of apartheid; during a 2001 trip to visit friends in Sri Lanka, he found himself in the midst of the violent conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military. Those chance experiences got Bruneau, who taught high school science for several years, interested in the psychology of human conflict. While teaching, he also volunteered as counselor for a conflict-resolution camp in Ireland that brought Catholic and Protestant children together. At MIT, Bruneau is now working with associate professor of cognitive neuroscience Rebecca Saxe to figure out why empathy - the ability to feel compassion for another person's suffering - often fails between members of opposing conflict groups. Post Comments:
The Top 10 Psychology Studies of 2010 The end of 2010 fast approaches, and I'm thrilled to have been asked by the editors of Psychology Today to write about the Top 10 psychology studies of the year. I've focused on studies that I personally feel stand out, not only as examples of great science, but even more importantly, as examples of how the science of psychology can improve our lives. Each study has a clear "take home" message, offering the reader an insight or a simple strategy they can use to reach their goals , strengthen their relationships, make better decisions, or become happier. If you extract the wisdom from these ten studies and apply them in your own life, 2011 just might be a very good year. 1) How to Break Bad Habits If you are trying to stop smoking , swearing, or chewing your nails, you have probably tried the strategy of distracting yourself - taking your mind off whatever it is you are trying not to do - to break the habit. J. 2) How to Make Everything Seem Easier J. 3) How To Manage Your Time Better M. J.
Intelligence, héritabilité et plasticité cérébrale Si vous avez suivi la semaine thématique sur le cerveau proposé par le C@fé des Sciences. Vous aurez peut-être noté que notre cerveau s’avère fortement malléable à certains facteurs environnementaux. Ainsi il semble que l’allaitement ait un effet important sur le développement ultérieur de certaines capacités cognitives! Néanmoins certains soulignent (en parti à juste titre) que notre intelligence serait également fortement héréditaire. «Le QI est hautement héréditaire et son héritabilité augmente avec l’âge» Cette assertion est généralement au centre des thèses «héréditaristes». Graphe représentant la supposée augmentation de l'héritabilité QI durant la croissance des individus. C’est bon vous avez pigé le truc? Bon pour ceux qui roupillent au fond de la classe, on devine ici que l’augmentation de l’héritabilité du QI avec l’âge serait en réalité dût à un véritable effet feedback! Les biais sont de retour! Conclusion: Références:
Human Memory: What happens in my brain when I can't recall something I know DISFLUENCY The basic idea here is that when you have a thought, any thought, it falls along a continuum from fluent to disfluent. A fluent thought is one that feels subjectively easy to have. When you speak English and you come across a common English name, like John, or Tom, or Ted, it's very, very easy to process that name. At the other end of the spectrum you might come across a foreign name or a novel name that you've never seen before or perhaps a name that you've seen before, but spelled very differently. This is a topic that I've been very interested in, and I've been interested in the concept of fluency and how that might affect a whole lot of different judgments that we make, and the way we process the world. The first is to look at how people feel about others. There are a lot of reasons why that might be. We've shown that effect in a whole lot of other different domains as well. When you look at persuasion, people can either process the information very deeply.
Elizabeth Loftus interview: False-memory research on eyewitnesses, child abuse recovered memories Hoang Xuan Pham From repressed memories to faulty eyewitness testimony, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California–Irvine, has made her name working on false memory. She tells Alison George how recollections can be conjured up, and how this process could even be used in therapy. Alison George: You study the fallibility of memories. Are we all prone to making things up?Elizabeth Loftus: We all have memories that are malleable and susceptible to being contaminated or supplemented in some way. AG: I hear you collect accounts of false memories.EL: Yes, mostly embarrassing mistakes that politicians have made. AG: How does this happen? AG: How did you end up studying false memories? AG: You're known for debunking the idea of repressed memories. AG: How did you study the process of creating false memories? AG: How susceptible are people to having these types of memories implanted? AG: Do you think it's not possible to repress memories of traumatic events?
La théorie argumentative du raisonnement C’est un des papiers scientifiques récents préférés de Johnatan Haidt, un des psychologues sociaux les plus importants du moment. De son aveu, “Il résout l’une des plus importantes et tenaces énigmes en psychologie”. Steven Pinker, autre pointure en psychologie cognitive, le désigne comme “original et provocateur, aux résultats très probables, et certainement d’importance pour la vie de tous les jours, tant pour le discours politique que pour l’éducation [...]“. Quelle énigme aurait été résolue ? Celle que l’on a abordé dans les trois derniers billets (ici, là et encore là): pourquoi nous sommes tellement bons pour raisonner dans certaines situations, mais tellement mauvais dans d’autres ! Depuis les grecs et Descartes, on pensait que raisonner permettait d’améliorer le savoir, rechercher la vérité, améliorer ses capacités cognitives. Convaincre les autres, et évaluer les arguments des autres Quelles preuves pour supporter cette hypothèse ? Bien préparé pour le débat !