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Every day, we engage in social interactions with other people which require understanding their as well as our own mental states. Such capacity is commonly referred to as Theory of Mind (ToM). Disturbances of ToM are often reported in diverse pathologies which affect brain functioning and lead to problems in social interactions. Identifying ToM deficits is thus crucial to guide the clinicians in the establishment of adequate rehabilitation strategies for patients. Previous studies have demonstrated that ToM is not a unitary function yet currently there are very few standardized tests which allow identifying the type of cognitive processes affected when a patient exhibits a ToM deficit. In the current study, we present two belief reasoning tasks which have been used in previous research to disentangle two types of processes involved in belief reasoning: self-perspective inhibition and the spontaneous inference of another person's belief. A three-step procedure was developed to provide clinicians with the tools to interpret the patients' performances on the tasks. First, these tasks were standardized and normative data was collected on a sample of 124 healthy participants aged between 18 and 74. Data collected showed a decrease in performance as a function of age only in the task that loaded most in spontaneous other-perspective demands. There was however no effect of gender or educational level. Cut-off scores to identify deficits were then calculated for the different age groups separately. Secondly, the three-step procedure was applied to 21 brain-damaged patients and showed a large diversity of profiles, including selective deficits of the two targeted ToM processes. The diversity of profiles shows the importance to take into account the multiple facets of ToM during the diagnosis and rehabilitation of patients with suspected ToM deficits.

Moral judgements are crucial for social life and rely on the analysis of the agent's intention and the outcome of the agent's action. The current study examines to the influence of how the information is presented on moral judgement. The first experiment investigated the effects of the order in which intention and outcome information was presented. The results showed that participants relied more on the last presented information, suggesting a recency effect. The second experiment required participants to make two types of judgments (wrongness vs. punishment) and manipulated the order of the requested two types of judgments. Results showed an asymmetrical transfer effect whereby punishment judgements, but not wrongness judgements were affected by the order of presentation. This asymmetrical transfer effect was likely linked to the ambiguity of the punishment judgement. Altogether, the study showed that the order in which information was presented and the order in which one was asked to think about the wrongness of an action or the punishment that the action deserves were two factors that should be irrelevant, but actually influenced moral judgements. The influence of these factors was mostly observed during the most difficult judgements, precisely in situations where human decision is called upon, such as in court trials.

This study tested the processing of ratios of natural numbers in school-age children. Nine- and eleven-year-olds were presented collections made up of orange and grey dots (i.e., nonsymbolic format) and fractions (i.e., symbolic format). They were asked to estimate ratios between the number of orange dots and the total number of dots and fractions by producing an equivalent ratio of surface areas (filling up a virtual glass). First, we tested whether symbolic notation of ratios affects their processing by directly comparing performance on fractions with that on dot sets. Second, we investigated whether children's estimates of nonsymbolic ratios of natural numbers relied at least in part on ratios of surface areas by contrasting a condition in which the ratio of surface areas occupied by dots covaried with the ratio of natural numbers and a condition in which this ratio of surface areas was kept constant across ratios of natural numbers. The results showed that symbolic notation did not really have a negative impact on performance among 9-year-olds, while it led to more accurate estimates in 11-year-olds. Furthermore, in dot conditions, children's estimates increased consistently with ratios between the number of orange dots and the total number of dots even when the ratio of surface areas was kept constant but were less accurate in that condition than when the ratio of surface areas covaried with the ratio of natural numbers. In summary, these results indicate that mental magnitude representation is more accurate when it is activated from symbolic ratios in children as young as 11 years old and that school-age children rely at least in part on ratios of surface areas to process nonsymbolic ratios of natural numbers when given the opportunity to do so.

Research on academic achievement at a university has mainly focused on success and persistence among first year students. Very few studies have looked at delay or failure in the completion of a final dissertation. However, this phenomenon could affect a substantial proportion of students and has considerable costs. The purpose of the present study is to identify factors which predict postponement in the completion of the final dissertation. Several potential predictors (e.g., background, personality, social support, motivational beliefs, and engagement) were selected through an integrative review of the literature on achievement in higher education. A questionnaire assessing these variables was administered to 341 students a few months before the deadline for their final dissertation. Results indicate that perceived peer support, perceived relatives support, role conflict, and age have an independent and significant effect on whether or not the final dissertation is completed on time. In addition, self-efficacy and behavioral engagement appeared to be mediators of the relationship between the social support and the final dissertation completion.

Rips et al.'s proposition cannot account for the facts that (1) a historical look at the word number systems suggests that the concept of natural numbers has been progressively elaborated; (2) people from cultures without an elaborate counting system do not master the concept of natural numbers; (3) children take time to master natural numbers; and (4) the competing advantage of the postulated math schema in the natural selection process is not obvious.