In daily life, humans are bombarded with visual input. Yet, their attentional capacities for processing this input are severely limited. Several studies, including my own, have investigated factors that influence these attentional limitations and have identified methods to circumvent them. In the present thesis, I provide a review of my own and others' findings. I first review studies that have demonstrated limitations of visuospatial attention and investigated physiological correlates of these limitations. I then turn to studies in multisensory research that have explored whether limitations in visuospatial attention can be circumvented by distributing information processing across several sensory modalities. Finally, I discuss research from the field of joint action that has investigated how limitations of visuospatial attention can be circumvented by distributing task demands across people and providing them with multisensory input. Based on the reviewed studies, I conclude that limitations of visuospatial attention can be circumvented by distributing attentional processing across sensory modalities when tasks involve spatial as well as object-based attentional processing. However, if only spatial attentional processing is required, limitations of visuospatial attention cannot be circumvented by distributing attentional processing. These findings from multisensory research are applicable to visuospatial tasks that are performed jointly by two individuals. That is, in a joint visuospatial task that does require object-based as well as spatial attentional processing, joint performance is facilitated when task demands are distributed across sensory modalities. Future research could further investigate how applying findings from multisensory research to joint action research may potentially facilitate joint performance. Generally, these findings are applicable to real-world scenarios such as aviation or car-driving to circumvent limitations of visuospatial attention.

Les robots sont les futurs compagnons et équipiers de demain. Que ce soit pour aider les personnes âgées ou handicapées dans leurs vies de tous les jours ou pour réaliser des tâches répétitives ou dangereuses, les robots apparaîtront petit à petit dans notre environnement. Cependant, nous sommes encore loin d'un vrai robot autonome, qui agirait de manière naturelle, efficace et sécurisée avec l'homme. Afin de doter le robot de la capacité d'agir naturellement avec l'homme, il est important d'étudier dans un premier temps comment les hommes agissent entre eux. Cette thèse commence donc par un état de l'art sur l'action conjointe en psychologie et philosophie avant d'aborder la mise en application des principes tirés de cette étude à l'action conjointe homme-robot. Nous décrirons ensuite le module de supervision pour l'interaction homme-robot développé durant la thèse. Une partie des travaux présentés dans cette thèse porte sur la gestion de ce que l'on appelle un plan partagé. Ici un plan partagé est une séquence d'actions partiellement ordonnées à effectuer par l'homme et/ou le robot afin d'atteindre un but donné. Dans un premier temps, nous présenterons comment le robot estime l'état des connaissances des hommes avec qui il collabore concernant le plan partagé (appelées états mentaux) et les prend en compte pendant l'exécution du plan. Cela permet au robot de communiquer de manière pertinente sur les potentielles divergences entre ses croyances et celles des hommes. Puis, dans un second temps, nous présenterons l'abstraction de ces plan partagés et le report de certaines décisions. En effet, dans les précédents travaux, le robot prenait en avance toutes les décisions concernant le plan partagé (qui va effectuer quelle action, quels objets utiliser...) ce qui pouvait être contraignant et perçu comme non naturel par l'homme lors de l'exécution car cela pouvait lui imposer une solution par rapport à une autre. Ces travaux vise à permettre au robot d'identifier quelles décisions peuvent être reportées à l'exécution et de gérer leur résolutions suivant le comportement de l'homme afin d'obtenir un comportement du robot plus fluide et naturel. Le système complet de gestions des plan partagés à été évalué en simulation et en situation réelle lors d'une étude utilisateur. Par la suite, nous présenterons nos travaux portant sur la communication non-verbale nécessaire lors de de l'action conjointe homme-robot. Ces travaux sont ici focalisés sur l'usage de la tête du robot, cette dernière permettant de transmettre des informations concernant ce que fait le robot et ce qu'il comprend de ce que fait l'homme, ainsi que des signaux de coordination. Finalement, il sera présenté comment coupler planification et apprentissage afin de permettre au robot d'être plus efficace lors de sa prise de décision. L'idée, inspirée par des études de neurosciences, est de limiter l'utilisation de la planification (adaptée au contexte de l'interaction homme-robot mais coûteuse) en laissant la main au module d'apprentissage lorsque le robot se trouve en situation "connue". Les premiers résultats obtenus démontrent sur le principe l'efficacité de la solution proposée. / In the future, robots will become our companions and co-workers. They will gradually appear in our environment, to help elderly or disabled people or to perform repetitive or unsafe tasks. However, we are still far from a real autonomous robot, which would be able to act in a natural, efficient and secure manner with humans. To endow robots with the capacity to act naturally with human, it is important to study, first, how humans act together. Consequently, this manuscript starts with a state of the art on joint action in psychology and philosophy before presenting the implementation of the principles gained from this study to human-robot joint action. We will then describe the supervision module for human-robot interaction developed during the thesis. Part of the work presented in this manuscript concerns the management of what we call a shared plan. Here, a shared plan is a a partially ordered set of actions to be performed by humans and/or the robot for the purpose of achieving a given goal. First, we present how the robot estimates the beliefs of its humans partners concerning the shared plan (called mental states) and how it takes these mental states into account during shared plan execution. It allows it to be able to communicate in a clever way about the potential divergent beliefs between the robot and the humans knowledge. Second, we present the abstraction of the shared plans and the postponing of some decisions. Indeed, in previous works, the robot took all decisions at planning time (who should perform which action, which object to use…) which could be perceived as unnatural by the human during execution as it imposes a solution preferentially to any other. This work allows us to endow the robot with the capacity to identify which decisions can be postponed to execution time and to take the right decision according to the human behavior in order to get a fluent and natural robot behavior. The complete system of shared plans management has been evaluated in simulation and with real robots in the context of a user study. Thereafter, we present our work concerning the non-verbal communication needed for human-robot joint action. This work is here focused on how to manage the robot head, which allows to transmit information concerning what the robot's activity and what it understands of the human actions, as well as coordination signals. Finally, we present how to mix planning and learning in order to allow the robot to be more efficient during its decision process. The idea, inspired from neuroscience studies, is to limit the use of planning (which is adapted to the human-aware context but costly) by letting the learning module made the choices when the robot is in a "known" situation. The first obtained results demonstrate the potential interest of the proposed solution.

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The development of executive function in young children is currently a central topic in developmental science. Despite great interest in this area, empirical research examining the influence of social interaction on children's executive functioning is still scarce. The present study aims to fill this gap by addressing how aspects of current and preceding social interactions affect preschool children's executive function performance. In the first phase of the experiment four- and five-year-old children completed an activity either individually or in collaboration with an experimenter. Following this manipulation, children completed a series of executive function tasks. The first task was a motor contagion task in which children moved a stylus on a graphics tablet while viewing a background video of another person producing congruent or incongruent movements. Children also completed a go/no-go task, a two-choice spatial compatibility task (i.e., a Simon task), and two joint go/no-go tasks in which they essentially shared a Simon task with an experimenter. The main finding from the motor contagion task was that children who collaborated with an experimenter in the first part of the study were more susceptible to interference from observing incongruent movements produced by their partner from the collaborative activity compared to observing the same movements produced by an experimenter who merely observed the collaboration. In addition, for children in both conditions, the results of the go/no-go and Simon tasks indicated the presence of a joint Simon effect. Specifically, a significant spatial compatibility effect was observed in the Simon task and the first time children completed the joint go/no-go task with an experimenter. Importantly, there was no spatial compatibility effect when children completed an individual go/no-go task. No differences were found for the joint Simon effect related to the social manipulation. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for our understanding of social influences on children's developing executive abilities. / Psychology

Entrainment is the rhythmic coordination of movement with a signal or other person. Most studies on entrainment have looked at synchronization with auditory or visual signals, whereas much less is known about how entrainment emerges mutually between individuals, especially when they are in physical contact with one another. In this dissertation, I empirically explored dance partnering as an ecological model for understanding interpersonal entrainment through haptic interaction. I began by performing a statistical meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging articles devoted to the most common experimental paradigm for entrainment, namely externally-paced finger tapping to an acoustic rhythmic stimulus (Chapter 2). The results showed that the cerebellar vermis was a strong neural marker of entrainment, as it was more activated by externally-paced tapping than by self-paced tapping, whereas the basal ganglia was activated by both types of rhythmic movements. Next, I used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a group of participants trained at couple dancing in order to explore the neural basis of haptic mutual entrainment, with a focus on the dynamics of leading and following (Chapter 3). While mutual interaction overall engaged brain networks involved in somatosensation, internal-body sensation and social cognition, leading showed enhanced activity principally in areas for motor control and self-initiated action, whereas following showed enhanced activity mainly in sensory and social-cognition areas. Finally, I used 3D motion capture to explore multisensory coupling for mutual entrainment at the group level during folk dancing (Chapter 4). The results showed that dancers relied most extensively on haptic coupling to synchronize as a group, whereas auditory and visual coupling were dependent on the spatiotemporal context. These studies advance our understanding of the neural and behavioural mechanisms underlying joint actions in which entrainment emerges mutually through haptic interaction. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Entrainment is the rhythmic coordination of movement with a signal or other person. Most studies on entrainment have looked at synchronization with auditory or visual signals, whereas much less is known about how entrainment emerges mutually between individuals, especially when they are in physical contact with one another. I began my research by performing a statistical analysis of the literature examining the brain basis of synchronization with auditory signals, identifying a key brain area for entrainment. Next, using a group of participants trained at couple dancing, I explored the brain areas engaged when two individuals in physical contact improvised movement together, focusing on who is leading or following the interaction. Finally, I explored how folk dancers use multiple sensory signals (auditory, visual and tactile) to synchronize as a group. These studies advance our understanding of the neural and behavioural mechanisms by which people mutually entrain through physical interaction.

Cette thèse étudie les dimensions non verbales de l’activité des enseignants et leur impact en termes de co-construction des savoirs et du genre. S'inscrivant dans le cadre de la théorie de l'action conjointe en didactique, elle s'appuie sur deux études de cas constitués par deux classes et leurs enseignants respectifs, en éducation physique et sportive dans l'activité badminton. A partir d'une méthodologie articulant des observations vidéo de séances et des entretiens avec les enseignants, et combinant deux niveaux d'analyse macro et micro-didactiques, les résultats mettent en évidence l’importance des dimensions non verbales dans les interactions professeurs-élèves. Dans les deux études de cas, il est montré comment ces dimensions non verbales conduisent d'un point de vue didactique à des acquisitions différentielles selon les filles et les garçons. Au-delà de ces résultats, l’étude contribue à théoriser « l'impensable du genre » dans la co-construction des savoirs en éducation physique sportive. / This thesis investigates the non-verbal aspects in the teacher’s activity and their impact on knowledge and gender co-construction. Relying on the Joint Action Theory in Didactics, this contribution is based on the observation of two classes and their respective teachers, teaching badminton, in Physical Education. Starting from a methodology combining the observation of videotaped lessons and teachers’ interviews and a two-fold analysis (macro and micro-didactics), the findings shed light on the importance of these non-verbal aspects in the interactions between teacher and students. In both case studies, it is shown how these non-verbal aspects lead, from a didactic point of view, to a gendered and differentiated process of acquiring content knowledge. Beyond these results, this study theoretically reveals the existence of a ‘gendered un-fore-thought’ in the co-construction of physical education knowledge.

Notre recherche est une ingénierie didactique de type coopératif (Sensevy & Mercier, 2007) qui s’attache à faire vivre à une classe de 5ème de collège, la complexité du cirque, oeuvre (Chevallard, 1995) au « risque de l’art » (Wallon, 2002), entre « jeux de l’Ilinx et jeux de Mimicry » (Caillois, 1958). Par l’analyse des interactions verbales et corporelles, nous analysons la portée des jeux d’apprentissage qui s’attachent à faire approcher la classe des jeux épistémiques circassiens. La Théorie Action Conjointe en Didactique (TACD) constitue les fondations théoriques de la construction de nos outils de recherche et de notre méthodologie qui traque la « circulation des savoirs entre professeur et élèves. » (Loquet, Roncin & Roesslé, 2007) / Our research is a didactic engineering of cooperative type (Sensevy and Haberdasher, 2007) which attempts to make live in a 2nd year of middle school, the complexity of the circus, work (Chevallard, on 1995,) at the "risk of the art" (Wallon, on 2002), between "games of Ilinx and games of Mimicry" (Caillois, on 1958). By the analysis of the verbal and physical interactions, we analyze the impact of serious games that attempt to make come the class to the circassian epistemic games. The Joint Action Theory in Didactics (TACD) establishes the theoretical foundations of the construction of our research tools and our methodology that pursues the "knowledges circulation between professor and pupils". (Loquet, Roncin and Roesslé, on 2007)

La thèse analyse l’implémentation des nouveaux programmes d’EPS et de SVT au Bénin dans le cadre de la réforme curriculaire selon l’approche par les compétences. Cette question est envisagée selon une approche comparative en termes de transposition didactique. Trois études emboitées structurent le travail empirique. La première caractérise les nouvelles matrices disciplinaires en EPS et en SVT à partir d’une analyse de contenus des documents officiels. La seconde s’intéresse aux points de vue des acteurs impliqués dans cette réforme depuis dix ans (inspecteurs, conseillers pédagogiques, enseignants). La troisième rend-compte, sous couvert de la théorie de l’action conjointe en didactique, des pratiques d’enseignement de 6 enseignants (3 en EPS : basket-ball et 3 en SVT : relations d’exploitation interspécifiques). Les résultats mettent en évidence les contraintes qui pèsent sur la mise en œuvre de ces nouveaux programmes. / This thesis is about the curriculum reform in physical education and biology as implemented in the Republic of Benin. The research is conveyed through a comparative approach and look at the didactical transposition. Three studies are conducted. The first one characterizes from a content analysis of official documents the new disciplinary matrix of the physical education curriculum and the biology curriculum. The second study concerns the discourses held by different actors (supervisors, mentors, and teachers) on the curriculum reform which began ten years ago. The last one is about the teaching practices of 6 teachers (3 in PE teaching basket-ball; 3 in Biology teaching predation and parasitism as inter species relations). The findings highlight the constraints that weight on the ways these new curricula are implemented in classroom.

The human brain is highly sensitive to social information and so is our language production system: people adjust not just what they say but also how they say it in response to the social context. For instance, we are sensitive to the presence of others, and our interactional expectations and goals affect how we individually choose to talk about and refer to things. This thesis is an investigation of the social factors that might lead speakers to adapt linguistically to others. The question of linguistic adaptation is conceived and addressed at two levels: as lexical convergence (i.e., interlocutors coordinating their lexical choices with each other), and as spatial perspective taking in language use (i.e., speakers abandoning their self perspective in favour of another's when verbally locating objects in space). What motivated my research was two-fold. First, I aimed to contribute to the understanding of the interplay between the automatic cognitive accounts and the strategic social accounts of linguistic convergence. At the same time, I wanted to explore new analytical tools for the investigation of interpersonal coordination in conversation (cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA)). Second, there are conflicting explanations as to why people often abandon their self spatial perspective when another person is present in the environment. I aimed to clarify this by bringing together insights from different research fields: spatial language production, spatial cognition, joint attention and joint action. A first set of experiments investigated the effects of speakers' deceptive goals on lexical convergence. Given the extensive evidence that one interlocutor's choices of words shapes another's during collaborative interaction, would we still observe this coordination of linguistic behaviour under conditions of no coordination of intents? In two novel interactive priming paradigms, half of the participants deceived their naïve partner in a detective game (Experiment 1) or a picture naming/matching task (Experiment 2-3) in order to jeopardise their partner's performance in resolving the crime or in a related memory task. Crucially, participants were primed by their partner with suitable-yet-unusual names for objects. I did not find any consistent evidence that deceiving led to a different degree of lexical convergence between deceivers and deceived than between truthful interlocutors. I then explored possibilities and challenges of the use of cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA) (a new analytical tool borrowed from dynamical systems) for the study of lexical convergence in conversation. I applied CRQA in Experiment 4, where I focused on the strategic social accounts of linguistic convergence and investigated whether speakers' tendency to match their interlocutors' lexical choices depended on the social impression that they formed of each other in a previous interaction, and whether this tendency was further modulated by the interactional goal. I developed a novel two-stage paradigm: pairs of participants first experienced a collectivist or an individualistic co-player in an economic decision game (in reality, a pre-set computer programme) and then engaged in a discussion of a survival scenario (this time with the real other) divided in an open-ended vs. joint-goal driven part. I found no evidence that the social impression of their interlocutor affected speakers' degree of lexical convergence. Greater convergence was observed in the joint-goal dialogues, replicating previous findings at syntactic level. Experiments 5-7 left the interactive framework of the previous two sets of experiments and explored spatial perspective taking in a non-interactive language task. I investigated why the presence of a person in the environment can induce speakers to abandon their self perspective to locate objects: Do speakers adapt their spatial descriptions to the vantage point of the person out of intentionality-mediated simulation or of general attention-orienting mechanisms? In an online paradigm, participants located objects in photographs that sometimes contained a person or a plant in various positions with respect to the to-be-located object. Findings were consistent with the simulated intentional accounts and linked non-self spatial perspective in language to the apprehension of another person’s visual affordance. Experiments 8-9 investigated the role of shared experience on perspective taking in spatial language. Prior to any communicative and interactional demand, do speakers adapt their spatial descriptions to the presumed perspective of someone who is attending to the same environment at the same time as them? And is this tendency further affected by the number of co-attendees? I expanded the previous online paradigm and induced participants into thinking that someone else was doing the task at the same time as them. I found that shared experience reinforced self perspective (via shared perspective) rather than reinforcing non-self perspective (via unshared perspective). I did not find any crowd effect.