La musique et la parole possèdent toutes deux un degré d’organisation temporelle i.e. de régularité dans le temps. Les stimuli de nature rythmique ont la particularité de pouvoir être anticipés par le cerveau et des études en linguistique et neurosciences ont montré que plus le cerveau est capable d’anticiper les évènements auditifs, meilleure est la qualité du traitement des stimuli. Les enfants sourds, bien que bénéficiant d’un input auditif de plus en plus précis grâce aux implants cochléaires et d’une prise en charge précoce, n’atteignent pas des niveaux de langage homogènes et souffrent de difficultés de perception en milieux bruyants ou lors de conversations. La situation conversationnelle présente un contexte complexe, nécessitant l’activation de la voie audio-motrice pour anticiper et s’adapter aux variations de la parole de son interlocuteur notamment au niveau temporel. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous avons cherché à analyser, grâce à des mesures électrophysiologiques et comportementales, si un entrainement rythmique actif de 30 minutes, pouvait avoir un effet sur les capacités de perception et d’accommodation temporelles de l’enfant sourd dans une tâche de dénomination en alternance avec un partenaire virtuel. Nous avons également testé les capacités rythmiques de ces enfants à différents niveaux de complexités. Les résultats montrent que les enfants sourds souffrent de difficultés à structurer les événements acoustiques selon différent niveaux de hiérarchie mais qu’un entrainement rythmique de 30 minutes versus une stimulation auditive, permet d’améliorer leurs compétences de perception et de production temporelles de la parole dans une situation d’interaction. / Music and speech both possess a certain degree of temporal organization i.e. a certain degree of regularity across time. Studies in linguistics and neuroscience have shown that the brain can extract regularities and use them to anticipate the forthcoming stimuli. It is furthermore established that the better the brain is able to anticipate auditory events, the better the quality of stimulus processing. Deaf children benefit from more and more precise auditory inputs due to advances in cochlear implants development, together with early rehabilitation interventions. However, a great majority of them do not achieve consistent language levels and have strong difficulties in noisy environments or conversations. The conversational situation presents a complex context, requiring the activation of the audio-motor path to anticipate and adapt to the variations of the speech of its interlocutor notably at the temporal level. In this thesis work, we have investigated the temporal perception and accommodation capacities of deaf children in a naming task alternating with a virtual partner, at both behavioral and electrophysiological levels. We have also tested whether an active rhythmic training lasting 30 minutes, could enhance these conversational abilities. Then, we have investigated the rhythmic abilities of these children at different levels complexities. The results show that deaf children suffer from difficulties in structuring acoustic events according to different levels of hierarchy but that a rhythmic training of 30 minutes versus an auditory stimulation, makes it possible to improve their skills of temporal perception and production of speech in a situation of interaction.

Orientador: Prof. Dr. André Mascioli Cravo / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do ABC, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Neurociência e Cognição, 2016. / We constantly learn and update our predictions about when events we cause will occur. This flexibility is important to program motor actions and to estimate when errors have been made. However, the mechanisms that govern learning and updating in temporal domain are largely unknown. In order to clarify these mechanisms we had three mains objectives: 1. To describe how we learn a new temporal relation between two events and how expectation is updated based on new information; 2. To describe the neural correlates underlying temporal learning and temporal updating; 3. To investigate temporal learning in two different sensory modalities: vision and audition, in order to verify whether such processes occur independently of sensory modality. In order to achieve the objectives, we developed two different experiments with electroencephalography recordings. In the first experiment, we aimed to answer the first two objectives by developing a behavioral task in which participants had to monitor whether a temporal error had been made. Results evidenced a rapid temporal adjustment by the participants to a new temporal relation. Temporal errors evoked electrophysiological markers classically related to error coding as frontal theta oscillations and feedback-related negativity. Delta phase was modulated by behavioral adjustments, suggesting its importance in temporal prediction updating. In conclusion, low frequency oscillations appear to be modulated in error coding and temporal learning. The second experiment investigated temporal learning in two different sensory modalities. Results indicated that time perception is biased differently depending on temporal marker sensory modality. Besides, we found that intertrial phase coherence of theta oscillations was modulated by expectation on both sensory conditions. However, such result occurs on central electrodes analysis, but not on sensory electrodes analysis, indicating a supramodal mechanism of temporal prediction.