Jury

• German Sumbre, CNRS research director,  Jury president
• Giovanna Ponte, Researcher, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, rapporteur
• Georges Debregeas, CNRS research director, rapporteur
• Aurore Avarguès-Weber, CNRS researcher, examinator
• Claire Wyart, CNRS research director, examinator
• Peter Neri, PhD supervisor

Abstract 

Depuis quelques décennies, le langage inclusif suscite régulièrement de vifs débats de société. Dans ce contexte, la psycholinguistique — la science qui s’intéresse à la compréhension du langage par le cerveau — permet d’apporter un regard scientifique sur certains aspects de ce sujet polémique.

The auditory system must integrate across many different temporal scales to derive meaning from complex natural sounds such as speech and music. A key challenge is that sound structures – such as phonemes, syllables, and words in speech – have highly variable durations. As a consequence, there is a fundamental difference between integrating across absolute time (e.g., a 100-millisecond window) vs. integrating across sound structure (e.g., a phoneme or word).

I propose that a field’s diversity is affected by what its members believe is required for success: Fields that value exceptional intellectual talent above all else may inadvertently obstruct the participation of women and (some) minority groups. The environment in these fields may be less welcoming to women and minority groups because of the cultural stereotypes that associate intellectual talent -- brilliance, genius, etc. -- with (white) men.

AUDIOECO - Ecologie Auditive: Perdre et restaurer le contact auditif avec la nature

Why are some things relatively easy to express in language (e.g., geometric shapes) but others hard (e.g., odors)? Various explanations have been suggested for this differential ineffability (i.e., the impossibility of putting phenomena into words). Perhaps it is due to something fundamental about the cognitive architecture of our mind~brains. The ease of naming visual as opposed olfactory entities, for example, has been attributed the amount brain area devoted to processing each sensory modality.

Abstract:

For a long time, economists have assumed that we were cold, self-centred, rational decision makers – so-called Homo economicus; the last few decades have shattered this view. The world we live in and the situations we face are of course rich and complex, revealing puzzling aspects of our behaviour. Optimally Irrational argues that our improved understanding of human behaviour shows that apparent 'biases' are good solutions to practical problems – that many of the 'flaws' identified by behavioural economics are actually adaptive solutions.