Catégorie d'événements: PHD defense

Abstract:

This thesis focuses on smiles in thematic transitions of conversations. These moments of negotiation between two themes particularly involve the collaboration of the participants. We have thus studied the role of smiles as ressources of this collaboration. Smiles are very frequent facial expressions but have not been studied in their relation to the organization of the interaction. In parallel, we studied the effect of the interactants’ relationship on this collaboration. To explore these issues, 40 interactions from two corpora (CHEESE! and PACO) were studied. In the first corpus, the participants know each other well, while in the second they met for the first time on the day of the recording. Smiles of the interactants were annotated according to the Smiling Intensity Scale. Thanks to the automatic smile detection tool SMAD, developed for the purpose of this thesis, we conducted a fine-grained analysis of the deployment of the three smile intensities. Our analyses consisted in articulating two complementary approaches: those of Conversational Analysis and Interactional Linguistics via sequential analyses as well as the approach of Corpus Linguistics which consisted in quantitatively interrogating our data. This methodology allowed us to identify three main results concerning transitions in relation to random moments in the conversations studied. (1) The phases of transitions are characterized by specific processes, some of which are invariant regardless of the relationship of the participants. (2) When the speaker initiates a new topic, a suppression of the smile is more frequently observed. (3) When the addressee accepts the thematic proposal, he is more inclined to increase his smile intensity. This thesis shows that the smile is a resource mobilized by the interactants when they make thematic transitions. For this reason, this thesis is in line with the work arguing for the inclusion of the smile as a resource to be taken into account in the multimodal analysis of interactions.

This thesis is based on the “embodied cognition” approach which considers memory as a unique multiple traces system, which simulates the sensorimotor and emotional components of past experiences to form memories and knowledge (Barsalou 2003, 2008). The aim is to know if the elderlies activate the motor component when they access knowledge and, when the motor component was activated, if the subsequent recognition of this knowledge was facilitated. Three experiments involving two experimental groups of elderlies living in nursing homes and suffering from neurodegenerative pathologies (group 1 – average age 75 years and group 2, average age 90 years) as well as a control group living at home (average age 75 years) were conducted. Two experiments using a sensorimotor priming paradigm were proposed to examine the effect of motor and taxonomic priming on the categorization task (motor and categorization).

The stimuli were object pictures (utensils and tools). The results show that the motor priming effect (the prime and the target imply a similar gesture of use) is preserved in the three groups. Since prime and target were visual stimuli, the effect of motor priming is due to the simulated motor component. There was also a taxonomic priming effect, but it remains dependent on motor priming and the aim of task. In the third experiment, participants studied the material (pictures of kitchen utensils and tools) in three different conditions: taxonomic, motor, and perceptual. The results show that the benefit of the motor processing during study was present at recognition for all subjects.

Thus, our work suggests that the simulation of the motor component remains preserved in “normal” and “pathological” aging.

Because of its high level of automaticity, handwriting appears particularly vulnerable to Parkinson’s disease (PD). Dysgraphia in PD manifests as a significant decrease in size, velocity and fluency of movement. Designed around four studies, this thesis aimed to characterise dysgraphia in PD at behavioural and cerebral levels, and to evaluate the effect of background music and musical sonification in the rehabilitation of writing disorders. We showed that movement fluency of spatially constrained spiral production was a relevant variable to evaluate the changes induced by PD and the effects drug treatment. Also, movement velocity in signature was an interesting parameter allowing to discriminate healthy participants from patients with treatment. The use of background music showed significant effects on handwriting disorders in a young patient, whereas its potential seemed less relevant compared to that of musical sonification for dysgraphia in PD. To better understand the effect of a basal ganglia PD dysfunction on handwriting, we manipulated its sequential (succession of strokes to form letters) and spatial adaptation components (pen movement under spatial constraints) in an fMRI study. Initially performed in young participants, this study clarified the functional role of three key regions of the writing brain network: the left dorsal premotor cortex, the left superior parietal lobule and the right cerebellum.

This dissertation is a multidimensional analysis of Dublin English in its sociolinguistic, phonetic and phonological aspects and has two major objectives: the detailed description of the intonational system of Dublin English (and the evaluation of the influence of some sociological criteria) and the in-depth study of the stylistic rises that can be found at the end of declarative sentences. These so-called HRTs (High Rising Terminals) or uptalk contours are used for various pragmatic purposes (such as seeking validation or ensuring that the speaker is following the conversation) and are present in many varieties of English. They have the particularity of carrying different functions and forms depending on the variety in which they are found. With an authentic corpus of 31 speakers recorded in the framework of the PAC programme (Phonology of Contemporary English, Durand & Przewozny-Desriaux, 2011) and the PAC Prosody protocol developed for this work, we demonstrate that Dublin has its own intonational system which is more static than that of Standard British English. We then show how several criteria such as gender and the proficiency in Irish can sometimes explain the variation encountered in Dublin. We then proceed to an in-depth study of HRTs in the city, showing that women make more of them and that these HRTs are distinguished from interrogative and continuative rises mainly by the increase in the fundamental frequency curve and by pragmatic features. Finally, we discuss how these rises and the speakers who produce them are perceived in Ireland.