Depuis des siècles, plusieurs penseurs et scientifiques ont abordé la relation entre la coopération, le langage et la cognition sociale. Parmi eux, Trần Đức Thảo (1917-1993) mérite une mention spéciale. Le but de la recherche qui suit est de présenter au lecteur la réflexion philosophique de Thảo sur le langage humain et son évolution. Nous essaierons de tracer les grandes lignes de la théorie de Thảo sur les origines du langage dans ses Recherches sur l'origine du langage et de la conscience (1973) dans lesquelles il a essayé de trouver une synthèse entre philosophie, linguistique, psychologie et anthropologie physique. La découverte du marxisme-léninisme a conduit Thảo à proposer une approche matérialiste et dialectique au problème de la relation entre corps esprit. De cette façon, Thảo a proposé une sorte de tournant matérialiste et historique de la philosophie de la conscience de Husserl qui était au cœur de ses premiers intérêts philosophiques. La théorie de Thảo met en relief la nature sociale du langage et de la cognition, de sorte que l’évolution du langage est inextricablement liée aux relations sociales. Une telle conclusion reposait sur l’hypothèse que le travail est une caractéristique exclusivement humaine qui distingue les humains des animaux. Pour lui, la genèse du langage est dans le travail humain et donc le langage se développe parmi nos ancêtres pré-humains ainsi que chez les humains en réponse aux problèmes posés par la vie matérielle. En gardant à l’esprit que le langage découle des exigences sociales et des besoins du monde matériel, selon Thảo le langage se transforme lui-même au fur et à mesure que la société humaine change. Et compte tenu des racines sociales de la pensée et du langage, la conscience évolue continuellement avec le temps. Dans ce cadre, Thảo a voulu déterminer la nature du langage et son rôle dans les sociétés préhistoriques et son évolution à travers les relations sociales. / Several thinkers and scientists throughout the philosophical and scientific tradition took up the relationship between cooperation, language, and social cognition. Among them, Trần Đức Thảoʼs (1917–1993) deserves a special mention. The purpose of the following research is to introduce the reader to Thảoʼs philosophical reflection on human language and its evolution. We shall attempt to map out the main lines of Thảoʼs theory of language origins set out in his Recherches sur l’origine du langage et de la conscience (1973) that combines philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and anthropology. The discovery of Marxism-Leninism led Thảo to suggest a materialistic and dialectic approach to the mind-body problem. In this way, Thảo tried to suggest a materialist and historical turn of Husserl’s philosophy of consciousness which was at the very heart of his own first philosophical interests. Thảo’s account threw into sharp relief the social nature of both language and cognition, so that language evolution is linked inextricably to social relations. Such a view depended upon the assumption that labour is an exclusively human characteristic which sets humans apart from animals. And the genesis of language is in human labour. In this way of thinking, language develops among both our pre-human ancestors and present humans in response to problems posed by the material life. Bearing in mind that language arises from the social demands and needs of the material world, language is transformed itself as human society changes. And given the social roots of thought and language, consciousness evolves continuously over time. Within this framework, Thảo wanted to determine the nature of language and its role in pre-historical societies and its making through social relations.

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Borderline-Persönlichkeitsstörung (BPS) ist eine schwere psychiatrische Störung, die durch tiefgreifende Probleme in Emotionsregulation und zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen gekennzeichnet ist. Die gestörten Beziehungsmuster werden als ein Kernmerkmal von BPS betrachtet, obwohl die empirische Evidenz dafür weitestgehend fehlt. Bisherige Ergebnisse sind auf behavioraler und neuronaler Ebene bei BPS durch das häufig komorbide Auftreten einer posttraumatischen Belastungsstörung (PTBS) verzerrt. Eine vielversprechende Möglichkeit, die Beziehungsstörung von Patienten mit BPS näher zu untersuchen, bietet das multidimensionale Konzept der Empathie. Daher konzentriert sich die vorliegende Arbeit auf die Identifizierung behavioraler und neuronaler Korrelate kognitiver und emotionaler Empathie bei BPS Patienten und den Einfluss einer komorbiden PTBS auf diese. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Patienten mit BPS Einschränkungen in beiden Facetten von Empathie zeigen, aber komorbide PTBS, intrusive Symptomatik und sexuelle Traumatisierung in der Vergangenheit mit schlechterer kognitiver Empathie einhergehen. Außerdem ist unter kognitiver Empathie die neuronale Aktivität im linken superior temporal Sulcus/Gyrus (STS/STG) bei BPS Patienten reduziert und mit der Ausprägung ihrer intrusiven Symptomatik assoziiert. Während emotionaler Empathie zeigen Patienten mit BPS im rechten insulären Kortex mehr Aktivität, die mit dem Hautleitwiderstand der BPS Patienten assoziiert ist. Die hier dargestellten Ergebnisse unterstützen ein Bild von BPS als eine Störung der emotionalen und kognitiven Empathie. Eine komorbid diagnostizierte PTBS scheint sich dabei zusätzlich verschlechternd auf die Fähigkeit zur kognitiven Empathie auszuwirken. Die veränderte Funktion von STS/STG und Insula könnte einen pathophysiologischen Vermittlungsmechanismus auf neuronaler Ebene für BPS darstellen, dabei scheinen die intrusiver Symptomatik und dem Grad der Erregung der Patienten eine wesentliche Rolle zu spielen. / Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe psychiatric malfunction, which involves deficits in emotion regulation and interpersonal relationships. Especially the interpersonal problems are seen as a core feature in BPD, even if there is only weak empirical evidence. Furthermore, the current results on behavioral and functional alterations of patients with BPD are biased by the high rate of comorbidity with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The multidimensional concept of empathy seems to be an eligible framework for the interpersonal problems of patients with BPD. Hence, the present work focuses on the identification of behavioral and neural correlates of cognitive (i.e., social cognition) and emotional (i.e., empathic concern) empathy in patients with BPD. Moreover the influence of comorbidities (e.g., PTSD) on the behavioral and neural alterations of patients with BPD was explored. Patients with BPD showed impairments in both facets of empathy, but comorbid PTSD, intrusive symptoms, and history of sexual trauma were only associated with outcomes in cognitive empathy. In this condition the brain responses were significantly reduced in BPD patients compared to controls in the left superior temporal sulcus and gyrus (STS/STG), where this reduction was associated with levels of intrusive symptomatology in the BPD group. During emotional empathy, patients with BPD exhibited greater brain activation than controls in the right middle insular cortex, a response that was associated with skin conductance responses in the patients. Thus, these findings support a conceptualization of BPD as involving deficits in emotional as well as in cognitive empathy. A comorbid PTSD seems to impair the cognitive empathic outcome additionally. Findings at the neural level indicate that altered functioning of the STS/STG and insula represents pathophysiological mediators for BPD, with an important role for intrusive symptomatology and levels of arousal.

Vorangegangene Untersuchungen zeigen, dass emotionale Inputeigenschaften (extrinsische Eigenschaften) das Erlernen neuer Wortbedeutungen bei Kindern befördern. Diese Eigenschaften sind nicht Teil des Referenten, auf den sich ein zu erlernendes Wort bezieht, z.B. der +/-fröhliche Gesichtsausdruck eines Sprechers, der ein unbekanntes Objekt mittels eines neuen Wortes benennt. Die vorliegende Studie konzentriert sich auf zwei bisher unbeachtete Fragen: a) Lassen sich ähnliche Einflüsse finden, wenn die emotionale Inputeigenschaft Teil des Referenten eines zu erlernenden Wortes ist (intrinsische Eigenschaften), z.B. der +/-fröhliche Gesichtsausdruck eines Akteurs in einer durch ein Verb benannten Handlung? b) Beeinflussen diese Eigenschaften die Bedeutung eines neuen Wortes, indem die emotionale Information mitbestimmt, wie das Wort in späteren Kontexten interpretiert wird? Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sich im Einklang mit Studien zu extrinsischen Inputeigenschaften die intrinsischen Eigenschaften ebenfalls förderlich auf das Erlernen neuer Wörter bei Kindern auswirken. Darüber hinaus legt die Studie nahe, dass die Wahrnehmung emotionaler Information während des Wortlernens individueller Variabilität unterliegt. Diese beeinflusst wiederum, wie Kinder die Bedeutung des neuen Wortes konstruieren und interpretieren. Verschiedene Faktoren wie Sprachkompetenz, Aufmerksamkeitssteuerung und soziale Kognition werden diskutiert, die individuelle Unterschiede in der Wahrnehmung emotionaler Information beim Wortlernen hervorrufen könnten. / Previous research shows that emotional properties of the input (extrinsic properties) enhance children’s learning of novel words. These properties are not features of the referent a novel word is referring to, e.g. the +/-happy intonation or facial expression of a speaker, who is referring to an object or event by using a novel word. With respect to this finding, the present study focuses on two unnoticed questions: a) Are similar influences found when the emotional properties are features of the referent of the word to be acquired (intrinsic properties), e.g. the +/-happy facial expression of an actor in an event that is labeled by a novel verb? b) Do these properties influence the meaning of a novel word, in that the emotional information constrains how the word is interpreted in later contexts? The results indicate that in line with studies on extrinsic emotional properties children’s learning of novel words is enhanced by intrinsic emotional properties. Furthermore, the study suggests that children’s perception of emotional information while learning a novel word is subject to individual variability, which affects how children construct and interpret the meaning of the novel word. Different factors such as language competence, attentional control and social cognition are discussed for inducing individual differences in emotion perception while word learning.

La Théorie de l’Esprit est l’ensemble des capacités cognitives permettant à un individu de se mettre à la place d’autrui. Longtemps considérée comme spécifiquement humaine, de plus en plus de comportements sociaux complexes sont rapportés chez les grands singes et plus récemment chez certaines espèces de singes, rendant son existence au sein d’autres espèces hautement débattue. Ce travail s’intéresse aux capacités de macaques à discriminer l’attention, la perception et les intentions d’autrui en situation de coopération ou de compétition, intraspécifique ou interspécifique. Dans ces expériences, les macaques se comportaient différemment selon les états d’attention, la perception visuelle et les intentions de leurs partenaires. Toutefois, les mécanismes sous-jacents à ces comportements complexes restent incertains. Les primates non humains peuvent en effet être de très bons lecteurs de comportements, capables de déchiffrer les comportements des autres sur la base d’apprentissages associatifs, mais pourraient également faire usage de représentations mentales. / Theory of Mind is the set of cognitive abilities allowing an individual to put himself in the place of others. Considered as specifically human for a long time, more and more complex social behaviours are reported in great apes, and more recently in some monkeys’ species. This work focuses on attention, perception and intention reading abilities in macaques in cooperative or competitive experiments and in interspecific and intraspecific situations. In these experiment, macaques behaved differently according to the attentional state, visual perception and intentions of their partners. However, the underlying mechanisms of these complex behaviours remain uncertain. Nonhuman primates would thus be very good behaviour readers, capable of decoding others behaviours via associative learning but could also use mental representations.

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This thesis questions the effectiveness of anti-racial discrimination mechanisms in France, particularly in relation to the national political culture. Considering the overall import of republican ideology in France, which emphasizes values of universalism, colour-blindness, and laïcité, there are significant implications for how institutional, legal and civil society actors have traditionally approached issues of racism in France. From primary data, gathered through fieldwork in France (consisting of a series of semi-structured interviews with key antiracist and anti-racial discrimination actors), this thesis highlights the ways in which the political culture impacts the anti-racial discrimination agenda. By taking into account the various levels of antiracism in France, this thesis constitutes a unique, holistic and race critical analysis whereby legal, civil society, institutional and non-conventional mechanisms are considered in conjunction with each other, instead of separately. Using “race” as an analytical tool for understanding the French context, this thesis offers a critical re-reading of French history, linking an ethnicized and racialized formation of national identity throughout key historical moments to contemporary forms of racism. This research thus argues that certain antiracist approaches based on republican ideology result in a limited understanding of racialized processes, which appears to constrain actors from producing effective mechanisms for challenging racism and racial discrimination.

Dans le règne animal, certaines espèces présentent une organisation en groupe complexe, permettant l’établissement d’interactions sociales plus ou moins élaborées entre les individus. Les comportements prosociaux, visant à améliorer le bien-être de l’autre, apparaissent préférentiellement entre animaux qui partagent une grande affinité ; ces comportements sont probablement favorisés par l’empathie, suggérant une prise en compte émotionnelle du partenaire. Les oiseaux, et particulièrement les corvidés et les psittacidés, se révèlent être d’excellents modèles pour étudier ce lien entre relation sociale et prise en compte de l’autre: ils forment des couples monogames sur le long terme au sein desquels une forte coopération existe. L’objectif de cette thèse est d’explorer comment le lien entre individus (familial, sexuel, amical) module les comportements prosociaux et empathiques. Les réactions des sujets sont évaluées via le partage de nourriture ou bien en observant une sensibilité accrue envers un congénère. Chez les perruches calopsittes (Nymphicus hollandicus), les oiseaux réagissent plus fortement au cri de détresse d’un oiseau préféré qu’au cri d’un autre congénère familier et les individus apparentés (frères et sœurs) partagent davantage la nourriture entre eux qu’avec les autres. Les perroquetsont tendance à être prosociaux mais la prise en compte de l’autre reste à confirmer. Les choucas des tours (Corvus monedula), placés dans une situation nouvelle avec un autre oiseau, passent plus de temps à proximité de leur partenaire sexuel que d’un autre oiseau de sexe opposé. Ces différents résultats suggèrent qu’un lien d’affinité existe entre les individus et qu’il façonne leurs comportements en termes de prosocialité et d’empathie. / In the animal kingdom some species form complex social groups in which elaborated relationships between individuals occur. Prosocial behaviors, i.e. actions that benefit others, preferentially occur between closely affiliated individuals and may be driven by empathy, the ability to identify and share the emotional states of others. Birds, particularly corvids and parrots, are excellent candidates for investigating the link between social relationship and other-regarding behavior. They are long-lived and form long-term monogamous pair-bonds in which a high level of cooperation is seen throughout the year. The aim of this thesis is to study how the nature of a relationship (sibling, mate or friend) can modulate prosocial behavior and its underlying emotions in parrots and a corvid species. The approach was to study food-sharing or behavioral reactions to stressful situations such as distress call playback or exposure to novel objects, in different social contexts. Cockatiels (Nymphicus hollandicus) reacted more to the distress calls of a closely affiliated partner than to those of a non-partner, and they preferably shared food with affiliated, related individuals. Different species of parrots preferentially chose a prosocial option over a selfish one, but it remains unclear whether they took the other’s perspective into account. Confronted with intimidating novel objects, jackdaws (Corvus monedula) spent more time in mutual proximity when paired with their mate than when with a familiar opposite-sex non-partner. However, they were not bolder when accompanied by their mate compared to a non-partner. These results suggest that an emotional link exists between affiliated individuals and that this special bond drives their prosocial and empathic behavioral responses. / Im Tierreich gibt es Arten mit komplexer Gruppenstruktur, in denen Individuen aufwendige soziale Beziehungen mit Artgenossen eingehen. Prosoziales Verhalten, ein Verhalten zum Wohle Anderer, tritt bevorzugt zwischen Individuen auf, die eine starke gegenseitige Bindung aufweisen. Prosozialität beruht auf Empathie-Fähigkeit, die wiederum ein gewisses Verständnis der emotionalen Lage von Artgenossen voraussetzt. Vögel, insbesondere Papageien und Krähen, sind geeignete Modelle, um Zusammenhänge zwischen sozialer Bindung und prosozialem Verhalten zu untersuchen: sie bilden Langzeit-monogame Paare, die das Jahr hindurch miteinander kooperieren. Ziel dieser Doktorarbeit ist es, herauszufinden, wie soziale Bindungen (verwandtschaftlicher, sexueller, oder freundschaftlicher Natur) prosoziales Verhalten und Empathie beeinflussen. Zu diesem Ziel wurden Studien über Futterteilen und Verhaltensreaktionen auf Stress in verschiedenen sozialen Kontexten durchgeführt. Nymphensittiche (Nymphicus hollandicus) reagierten stärker auf Warnrufe ihres Partners als auf die eines anderen Gruppenmitglieds. Ebenso teilten verwandte Sittiche häufiger Futter miteinander als mit anderen Individuen. Verschiedene Papageienarten bevorzugten in einer Entscheidungssituation prosoziale über egoistische Optionen, wobei unklar bleibt, ob sie die Perspektive ihres Partners verstanden. Dohlen (Corvus monedula), die mit einem für sie unheimlichen neuen Objekt konfrontiert wurden, verbrachten mehr Zeit in gegenseitiger Nähe, wenn sie mit Ihrem Partner als mit einem anderen Individuum getestet wurden. Sie verhielten sich aber in Gegenwart ihres Partners nicht mutiger. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass Bindungen zwischen Individuen prosoziales Verhalten und empathische Reaktionen aufeinander beeinflussen.

This thesis examines attentional and cognitive biases for particular facial expressions in delusion-prone and deluded individuals. The exploration of cognitive biases in delusion-prone individuals provides one means of elucidating psychological processes that might be involved in the genesis of delusions. Chapter 1 provides a brief review of the continuum approach to schizophrenia, and outlines recent theoretical conceptualisations of delusions. The study of schizophrenia phenomena at the symptom level has become a popular method of inquiry, given the heterogeneous phenotypic expression of schizophrenia, and the uncertainty surrounding the existence of a core neuropathology. Delusions are one of the most commonly experienced symptoms of schizophrenia, and have traditionally been regarded as fixed, false beliefs that are pathognomonic of an organic disease process. However, recent phenomenological evidence of delusional ideation in the general population has led to the conceptualisation of delusions as multi-dimensional entities, lying at the extreme end of a continuum from normal through to maladaptive beliefs. Recent investigations of the information processing abnormalities in deluded individuals are reviewed in Chapter 2. This strand of research has revealed evidence of various biases in social cognition, particularly in relation to threat-related material, in deluded individuals. These biases are evident in probabilistic reasoning, attribution style, and attention, but there has been relatively little investigation of cognitive aberrations in delusion-prone individuals. In the present thesis, social-cognitive biases were examined in relation to a standard series of faces that included threat-related (anger, fear) and non-threatening (happy, sad) expressions, in both delusion-prone and clinically deluded individuals. Chapters 3 and 4 present the results of behavioural (RT, affect recognition accuracy) and visual scanpath investigations in healthy participants assessed for level of delusion- proneness. The results indicate that delusion-prone individuals are slower at processing angry faces, and show a general (rather than emotion-specific) impairment in facial affect recognition, compared to non-prone healthy controls. Visual scanpath studies show that healthy individuals tend to direct more foveal fixations to the feature areas (eyes, nose, mouth) of threat-related facial expressions (anger, fear). By contrast, delusion-prone individuals exhibit reduced foveal attention to threat-related faces, combined with �extended� scanpaths, that may be interpreted as an attentional pattern of �vigilance-avoidance� for social threat. Chapters 5 and 6 extend the work presented in Chapters 3 and 4, by investigating the presence of similar behavioural and attentional biases in deluded schizophrenia, compared to healthy control and non-deluded schizophrenia groups. Deluded schizophrenia subjects exhibited a similar delay in processing angry faces, compared to non-prone control participants, while both deluded and non-deluded schizophrenia groups displayed a generalised affect recognition deficit. Visual scanpath investigations revealed a similar style of avoiding a broader range of negative (anger, fear, sad) faces in deluded schizophrenia, as well as a common pattern of fewer fixations with shorter duration, and reduced attention to facial features of all faces in both deluded and non-deluded schizophrenia. The examination of inferential biases for emotions displayed in facial expressions is presented in Chapter 7 in a study of causal attributional style. The results of this study provide some support for a �self-serving� bias in deluded schizophrenia, as well as evidence for an inability to appreciate situational cues when making causal judgements in both delusion-prone and deluded schizophrenia. A theoretical integration of the current findings is presented in Chapter 8, with regard to the implications for cognitive theories of delusions, and neurobiological models of schizophrenia phenomena, more generally. Visual attention biases for threat-related facial expressions in delusion-prone and deluded schizophrenia are consistent with proposals of neural dysconnectivity between frontal-limbic networks, while attributional biases and impaired facial expression perception may reflect dysfunction in a broader �social brain� network encompassing these and medial temporal lobe regions. Strong evidence for attentional biases and affect recognition deficits in delusion-prone individuals implicates their role in the development of delusional beliefs, but the weaker evidence for attributional biases in delusion-prone individuals suggests that inferential biases about others� emotions may be relevant only to the maintenance of delusional beliefs (or that attributional biases for others� emotional states may reflect other, trait-linked difficulties related to mentalising ability). In summary, the work presented in this thesis demonstrates the utility of adopting a single-symptom approach to schizophrenia within the continuum framework, and attests to the importance of further investigations of aberrant social cognition in relation to the development of delusions.

<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test is a widely used test for measuring aspects of social cognition. The aim of the present study was to provide results from a group of typically developing Swedish children (age 9-12) and to compare these results with children and adults in other Swedish and English studies, as well as results from a group of children with Asperger syndrome. <strong>Method: </strong>A Swedish version of the child version of the test was completed by 83 controls and by six children with Asperger syndrome. Results were compared between the two groups and with data from other studies. <strong>Results: </strong>The children in the current study did not differ on scores compared to children in the same age group in other studies. The children in the current study scored significantly lower than adults in an earlier study. The results from the children with Asperger syndrome did not differ significantly to the results from the controls.</p>