Units

Consciousness, Cognition & Computation Group

The goal of the Co3 is to contribute to our understanding of the elementary cognitive processes involved in learning, cognitive development, and automaticity. One of the central research topics of the Co3 concerns the role of consciousness in these elementary processes, and in particular the issue of determining which can occur without awareness. The research projects of the Co3 generally combine behavioral methods (experimentation with healthy participants in a lifelong perspective and with brain-damaged patients), modelling (neural networks), and neuroimaging methods (PET, MEG et fMRI). Recently, a Babylab has been installed, in other words a laboratory dedicated to the study of the development of the infants and toddlers' cognitive and social abilities. http://babylab.ulb.ac.be/Bienvenue.html

Projetcs

Elementary mechanisms of implicit statistical learning and social cognition: A developmental approach

The mechanisms through which the child learn to master a structured set of complex stimuli is an centralissue in developmental psychology. Indeed, language learning constitutes the paradigmatic example ofthis situation. Importantly, language learning takes place within a complex social context involving theinteraction between several individuals with communicative intentions (Baldwin, 1995; Brooks &Meltzoff, 2005; Bruner, 1983; Tomasello, 2003a, 2003b; Tomasello & Farrar, 1986). However, these theoriesand models have not yet been tested in the context of early speech and language learning (Kuhl, 2007)and the available data demonstrating the ability of infants and toddlers to detect the others' intentionsremain sparse (Behne, Carpenter, Call & Tomasello, 2005).