Yousri Marzouki | Aix-Marseille University (original) (raw)

Papers by Yousri Marzouki

It is well established that emotion and cognition interact in humans, but such an interaction has... more It is well established that emotion and cognition interact in humans, but such an interaction has not been extensively studied in nonhuman primates. We investigated whether emotional value can affect nonhuman primates’ processing of stimuli that are only mentally represented, not visually available. In a short-term memory task, baboons memorized the location of two target squares of the same color, which were presented with a distractor of a different color. Through prior long-term conditioning, one of the two colors had acquired a negative valence. Subjects were slower and less accurate on the memory task when the targets were negative than when they were neutral. In contrast, subjects were faster and more accurate when the distractors were negative than when they were neutral. Some of these effects were modulated by individual differences in emotional disposition. Overall, the results reveal a pattern of cognitive avoidance of negative stimuli, and show that emotional value alters cognitive processing in baboons even when the stimuli are not physically present. This suggests that emotional influences on cognition are deeply rooted in evolutionary continuity.

The present study investigates the effects of emotional unconscious context on recognizing elemen... more The present study investigates the effects of emotional unconscious context on recognizing elements as being part of a social representation (SR). The subliminal priming paradigm was used where a subliminal facial expression (happy vs. angry) was presented prior to a target sentence, which was an item belonging either to central or peripheral elements of the SR of higher education studied by Lo Monaco, Lheureux and Halimi-Falkowicz (2008). Two factors were manipulated in this experiment: emotional priming (positive, negative, and no priming) crossed with the structural status of items (central vs. peripheral) in a mixed design. Two dependent measures were recorded: the yes/no responses and reaction time. Overall, the results support the idea that the structural status of the target items was preserved while in the negative emotional priming condition, as participants tended to be slower to respond " No " to central elements compared with the no priming and positive priming conditions. Moreover, our findings suggest that central elements are always recognized as such even if the unconscious context varies. Finally, this study revealed the insensitivity of central elements to unconscious context variations, a point that is not declared by the theory. Hence, our findings may contribute to the further development of central core theory by taking into consideration subtle contextual manipulation in follow-up studies.

Fagot & Paleressompoulle 1 and Fagot & Bonte 2 have published an automated learning device (ALDM)... more Fagot & Paleressompoulle 1 and Fagot & Bonte 2 have published an automated learning device (ALDM) for the study of cognitive abilities of monkeys maintained in semi-free ranging conditions. Data accumulated during the last five years have consistently demonstrated the efficiency of this protocol to investigate individual/physical cognition in monkeys, and have further shown that this procedure reduces stress level during animal testing 3. This paper demonstrates that networks of ALDM can also be used to investigate different facets of social cognition and in-group expressed behaviors in monkeys, and describes three illustrative protocols developed for that purpose. The first study demonstrates how ethological assessments of social behavior and computerized assessments of cognitive performance could be integrated to investigate the effects of socially exhibited moods on the cognitive performance of individuals. The second study shows that batteries of ALDM running in parallel can provide unique information on the influence of the presence of others on task performance. Finally, the last study shows that networks of ALDM test units can also be used to study issues related to social transmission and cultural evolution. Combined together, these three studies demonstrate clearly that ALDM testing is a highly promising experimental tool for bridging the gap in the animal literature between research on individual cognition and research on social cognition. Video Link The video component of this article can be found at http://www.jove.com/video/52798/

In order to be made aware of bioethical issues related to their disciplines, undergraduate studen... more In order to be made aware of bioethical issues related to their disciplines, undergraduate students in biology and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of XXX are required to enroll in the bioethics course “Introduction to Bioethics”. This paper describes the chances and challenges faced when teaching a large number of undergraduate biology and pharmaceutical sciences students. Attention is drawn to the relevance and specific ethical issues that biology and pharmaceutical sciences students may be confronted with, and how these could be integrated into ethics curricula. Results from a survey addressing the knowledge and opinion of students taking the course in spring semester 2012, 2013, and 2014 are presented and discussed. Finally, we describe the lessons learned and how we have improved the course based on students’ feedback throughout the following years.

Humans have the capacity to use stimuli interchangeably by forming equivalence classes, and this ... more Humans have the capacity to use stimuli interchangeably by forming equivalence classes, and this ability seems to be supported by our language system. According to Sidman and Tailby (Conditional discrimination vs. matching to sample: an expansion of the testing paradigm. J Exp Anal Behav 37:5–22, 1982), the formation of equivalence classes require that three relations are derived among the class members, and past experiments have shown that one of these relations, i.e., symmetry, corresponding to the ability to reverse a relation (if A ? B, then B ? A), is extremely difficult to obtain in non-human animals. Because language development and the ability to form equivalence classes both co-occur in children with an increased ability to form categories, the current study tested the idea that category learning might promote symmetry in a nonhuman primate species. In Experiment 1, twelve Guinea baboons (Papio papio) were trained to associate 60 pictures of bears and 60 pictures of cars to two category labels, before being tested in symmetry trials. In Experiment 2, symmetry was trained and tested by reversing the association order between labels and pictures, using a new set of stimuli. In both experiments, the baboons successfully demonstrated category discrimination, but had only a weak (though significant) tendency to respond in accordance with symmetry during test trials. Altogether, our results confirm that symmetry is inherently

The aim of the present study was to provide a list of psychological variables likely to explain c... more The aim of the present study was to provide a list of psychological variables likely to explain cannabis abuse among adolescents and young adults based on the following psychological risk factors: anxiety, depression, difficulty in describing feelings, difficulty in identifying feelings, and external oriented thought. The analysis was based on the multiple logistic regression technique; the step-wise procedure showed that only anxiety, depression, and difficulty in describing feelings were retained in the final model. Following this, additive versus interactive models under different assumptions between the three independent variables were also assessed. The key findings of this study are twofold: (a) anxiety was revealed to be the primary risk factor for cannabis abuse and (b) no interaction between the aforementioned factors proved to be significantly informative in explaining high risk cannabis abuse. Findings were discussed in the context of the current knowledge of the relationship between anxious and depressive symptoms and higher risk of substance abuse and dependence.

Social media have significantly penetrated our lives and consequently have modified many of our b... more Social media have significantly penetrated our lives and consequently have modified many of our behaviors and our brain activities. Virtual Collective Consciousness (VCC) is a promising framework to understand the mechanisms underlying these new virtual channels of communication. To illustrate this idea, VCC was first shown to be captured through analyzing a 6640-word corpus from 333 respondents about Facebook contribution to the Tunisian revolution and then by tracing the Search Volume Index of specific keywords as a worldwide proxy of VCC during the Arab Spring. Indeed, few studies have shown recently that search engine query data have proven useful in offering insights about the complexity of our world (e.g., economic interests). To do so, data from Google Trends covering the 52 weeks of 2011 were extracted using the following search terms: Tunisian revolution, Egyptian revolution, revolution Facebook, and Twitter Facebook. the results revealed significant cross-correlations betw...

PLoS ONE, 2014

The affect-as-information hypothesis (e.g., , predicts that the positive or negative valence of o... more The affect-as-information hypothesis (e.g., , predicts that the positive or negative valence of our mood differentially affects our processing of the details of the environment. However, this hypothesis has only been tested with mood induction procedures and fairly complex cognitive tasks in humans. Here, six baboons (Papio papio) living in a social group had free access to a computerized visual search task on which they were over-trained. Trials that immediately followed a spontaneously expressed emotional behavior were analyzed, ruling out possible biases due to induction procedures. RTs following negatively valenced behaviors are slower than those following neutral and positively valenced behaviors, respectively. Thus, moods affect the performance of nonhuman primates tested in highly automatized tasks, as it does in humans during tasks with much higher cognitive demands. These findings reveal a presumably universal and adaptive mechanism by which moods influence performance in various ecological contexts.

This article is the result of an international research between law and ethics scholars from Univ... more This article is the result of an international research between law and ethics scholars from Universities in France and Switzerland, who have been closely collaborating with technical experts on the design and use of information and communication technologies in the fields of human health and security. The interdisciplinary approach is a unique feature and guarantees important new insights in the social, ethical and legal implications of these technologies for the individual and society as a whole. Its aim is to shed light on the tension between secrecy and transparency in the digital era. A special focus is put from the perspectives of psychology, medical ethics and European law on the contradiction between individuals' motivations for consented processing of personal data and their fears about unknown disclosure, transferal and sharing of personal data via information and communication technologies (named the ''privacy paradox''). Potential benefits and harms for the individual and society resulting from the use of computers, mobile phones, the Internet and social media are being discussed. Furthermore, the authors point out the ethical and legal limitations inherent to the processing of personal data in a democratic society governed by the rule of law. Finally, they seek to demonstrate that the impact of information and communication technology use on the individuals' well-being, the latter being closely correlated with a high level of fundamental rights protection in Europe, is a promising feature of the socalled ''edemocracy'' as a new way to collectively attribute meaning to large-scale online actions, motivations and ideas.

Background/Study Context: Associative memory deficit and executive functioning deficit are two al... more Background/Study Context: Associative memory deficit and executive functioning deficit are two alternative—but nonexclusive—accounts of the episodic memory deficit observed in aging. The first explain the episodic memory decline generally observed in aging by an associative memory deficit (memory decline per se), whereas the second explains it by an executive functioning deficit. This distinction could be critical in early discrimination between healthy aging and very mild Alzheimer’s-type dementia.

Methods: Memory performance was measured in older adults (n = 20) and paired younger participants (n = 20), whereas the facial expression and auditory context (spoken voice) associated with the face were manipulated between study and test. Recollection and familiarity were estimated using a remember/know judgment, and source memory performance was obtained depending on the information to retrieve.

Results: Although no between-group difference was observed for correctly recognized old faces, older participants made more false alarms than younger ones, thus revealing lower discriminability (d’). Facial expression change decreased recognition for all participants, whereas auditory context change decreased recognition only for younger participants. Remember/know judgments revealed age-related deficits in both recollection and familiarity, the relative decrease in familiarity reported by older adults was particularly large in the expression change conditions, and a disadvantage in source memory performance was particularly pronounced when the task was to retrieve auditory context associated with the face at study.

Conclusions: The present findings show that age-related associative memory differences occur with familiarity as well as recollection and are observed in situations that do not necessarily require conscious retrieval. This age-related decline is more prominent for multimodal (face–auditory context) than for intraitem (face-expression) associations. The value of exploring both memory trace and memory judgment was discussed, and potential applications for the development of neuropsychological tools for memory assessment in aging were highlighted.

North American Journal of Psychology (In Press), 2015

The present study investigates the effects of emotional unconscious context on recognizing elemen... more The present study investigates the effects of emotional unconscious context on recognizing elements as being part of a social representation(SR). The subliminal priming paradigm was used where a subliminal facial expression (happy vs. angry) was presented prior to a target sentence, which was an item belonging either to central or peripheral elements of the SR of higher education studied by Lo Monaco, Lheureux and Halimi-Falkowicz (2008). Two factors were manipulated in this experiment: emotional priming (positive, negative, and no priming)crossed with the structural status of items (central vs. peripheral) in a mixed design. Two dependent measures were recorded: the yes/no responses and reaction time. Overall, the results support the idea that the structural status of the target items was preserved while in the negative emotional priming condition, as participants tended to be slower to respond “No” to central elements compared with the no priming and positive priming conditions. Moreover, our findings suggest that central elements are always recognized as such even if the unconscious context varies. Finally, this study revealed the insensitivity of central elements to unconscious context variations, a point that is not declared by the theory. Hence, our findings may contribute to the further development of central core theory by taking into consideration subtle contextual manipulation in follow-up studies.

Social media has penetrated individual and collective lives to a huge extent and consequently mod... more Social media has penetrated individual and collective lives to a huge extent and consequently modified many of our online and offline behaviors. Public and private organizations worldwide would therefore greatly benefit from a better understanding of the fundamental principles governing the individual and collective behaviours of people connected through social media...

Effects of stimulus duration and inter-letter spacing were studied in a letter-in-string identifi... more Effects of stimulus duration and inter-letter spacing were studied in a letter-in-string identification paradigm. Participants were shown strings of 5 random consonants (e.g., PGKDM) centered on fixation and were asked to identify the letter that had appeared at a post-cued location. Stimulus duration was manipulated in Experiment 1 (13 ms – 91 ms), and inter-letter spacing manipulated in Experiment 2 (for a fixed stimulus duration of 26 ms). We contrasted performance to outer-letters (positions1 and 5) with non-central inner letters (positions 2 and 4), the first-letter (position 1) with the final letter (position 5), and the central-letter (position 3) with the other inner letters (positions 2 and 4). The outer-letter advantage and the first-letter advantage were present throughout the entire range of exposure durations, whereas the central-letter advantage increased with longer exposures. On the other hand, increased spacing reduced both the outer-letter advantage and the first-letter advantage, whereas it led to a greater central-letter advantage. Changes in acuity and crowding as a function of stimulus exposure and inter-letter spacing, can account for this pattern of results.

The Huffington Post US, Dec 27, 2013

After the success of four editions of Whitacre's worldwide virtual choir and all the media covera... more After the success of four editions of Whitacre's worldwide virtual choir and all the media coverage of the event, one might ask: what's new with one more reading about the virtual choir this time? Maybe the answer is the onstage participation via Skype of 32 performers from different countries as part of an ongoing live performance with all the synchronization headaches it involves.

International Relations and Security Network (ISN), Dec 11, 2013

""Was Tunisia’s 2011 uprising a ‘Facebook Revolution’? Absolutely, argues Yousri Marzouki. The cy... more ""Was Tunisia’s 2011 uprising a ‘Facebook Revolution’? Absolutely, argues Yousri Marzouki. The cyber-battle won by the activists and Facebook Corporation was critical to the success of the uprising. In fact, Facebook remains embedded in the ‘political unconscious’ of the Tunisian people.

By Yousri Marzouki for ISN
""

Computer Systems Experiences of Users with and without Disabilities: An Evaluation Guide for Professionals. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press

Journal of Comparative Psychology, Jun 2013

Recent studies of monkeys and apes have shown that these animals can solve relational-matching-to... more Recent studies of monkeys and apes have shown that these animals can solve relational-matching-tosample (RMTS) problems, suggesting basic abilities for analogical reasoning. However, doubts remain as to the actual cognitive strategies adopted by nonhuman primates in this task. Here, we used dual-task paradigms to test 10 baboons in the RMTS problem under three conditions of memory load. Our three test conditions allowed different predictions, depending on the strategy (i.e., flat memorization of the percept, reencoding of the percept, or relational processing) that they might use to solve RMTS problems. Results support the idea that the baboons process both the items and the abstract (same and different) relations in this task.

On February 23, 2013 in the capital of Tunisia, a group of high-school students shot a Harlem Sha... more On February 23, 2013 in the capital of Tunisia, a group of high-school students shot a Harlem Shake video. These kids picked up the viral wave that hit the Internet in February 2013. About 9 months earlier, DJ Baauer released the song that has since become the soundtrack of thousands of other short videos on which people, following an established pattern, dance like crazy to his music. As accurately put by Gilad Lotan, VP of Research and Development at SocialFlow, in the opening of his excellent data-driven analysis of the phenomenon: "If you still have not heard of the Harlem Shake you must be living in a cave". Fortunately, the Tunisian kids do not live in a cave. But, at first blush, there is no reason why we should focus on their version rather than the thousands of others.

Acta Psychologica, 2013

Earlier studies have suggested that information from a prime stimulus can be integrated with targ... more Earlier studies have suggested that information from a prime stimulus can be integrated with target information even when the two stimuli appear at different spatial locations. Here, we examined such location invariance in a masked repetition priming paradigm with single letter and word stimuli. In order to neutralize effects of acuity and spatial attention on prime processing, subliminal prime stimuli always appeared on fixation. Target location varied randomly from trial to trial along the horizontal meridian at one of seven possible locations for letter stimuli (−7° to +7°) and three positions for word stimuli (−4°, 0°, +4°). Speed of responding to letter and word targets was affected by target location, and by priming, but the size of repetition priming effects did not vary as a function of target location. These results suggest that masked repetition priming is mediated by representations that integrate information about object identity independently of object location.

The influence of Facebook in social life keeps constantly growing. Recently, the communication of... more The influence of Facebook in social life keeps constantly growing. Recently, the communication of information has been vital to the success of the Tunisian revolution, and Facebook was its main ''catalyst.'' This study examines the key reasons that explain Facebook's contribution to this historical event, as perceived by Tunisian Internet users. To do so, we launched this study 5 days after the fall of the regime using an online questionnaire in which participants (N = 333) first rated the importance of Facebook in the Tunisian revolution and then explained the reasons for their ratings. A cluster analysis based on the Euclidean distance between the most frequent words in the participants' text corpus (6,640 words), revealed three main clusters that we interpret as follows: 1: Facebook political function, 2: Facebook informational function, and 3: Facebook media platform function. It is likely that these factors reflect the dynamic of Tunisian cyberspace and the Tunisian Internet users' collective consciousness during the revolution.

It is well established that emotion and cognition interact in humans, but such an interaction has... more It is well established that emotion and cognition interact in humans, but such an interaction has not been extensively studied in nonhuman primates. We investigated whether emotional value can affect nonhuman primates’ processing of stimuli that are only mentally represented, not visually available. In a short-term memory task, baboons memorized the location of two target squares of the same color, which were presented with a distractor of a different color. Through prior long-term conditioning, one of the two colors had acquired a negative valence. Subjects were slower and less accurate on the memory task when the targets were negative than when they were neutral. In contrast, subjects were faster and more accurate when the distractors were negative than when they were neutral. Some of these effects were modulated by individual differences in emotional disposition. Overall, the results reveal a pattern of cognitive avoidance of negative stimuli, and show that emotional value alters cognitive processing in baboons even when the stimuli are not physically present. This suggests that emotional influences on cognition are deeply rooted in evolutionary continuity.

The present study investigates the effects of emotional unconscious context on recognizing elemen... more The present study investigates the effects of emotional unconscious context on recognizing elements as being part of a social representation (SR). The subliminal priming paradigm was used where a subliminal facial expression (happy vs. angry) was presented prior to a target sentence, which was an item belonging either to central or peripheral elements of the SR of higher education studied by Lo Monaco, Lheureux and Halimi-Falkowicz (2008). Two factors were manipulated in this experiment: emotional priming (positive, negative, and no priming) crossed with the structural status of items (central vs. peripheral) in a mixed design. Two dependent measures were recorded: the yes/no responses and reaction time. Overall, the results support the idea that the structural status of the target items was preserved while in the negative emotional priming condition, as participants tended to be slower to respond " No " to central elements compared with the no priming and positive priming conditions. Moreover, our findings suggest that central elements are always recognized as such even if the unconscious context varies. Finally, this study revealed the insensitivity of central elements to unconscious context variations, a point that is not declared by the theory. Hence, our findings may contribute to the further development of central core theory by taking into consideration subtle contextual manipulation in follow-up studies.

Fagot & Paleressompoulle 1 and Fagot & Bonte 2 have published an automated learning device (ALDM)... more Fagot & Paleressompoulle 1 and Fagot & Bonte 2 have published an automated learning device (ALDM) for the study of cognitive abilities of monkeys maintained in semi-free ranging conditions. Data accumulated during the last five years have consistently demonstrated the efficiency of this protocol to investigate individual/physical cognition in monkeys, and have further shown that this procedure reduces stress level during animal testing 3. This paper demonstrates that networks of ALDM can also be used to investigate different facets of social cognition and in-group expressed behaviors in monkeys, and describes three illustrative protocols developed for that purpose. The first study demonstrates how ethological assessments of social behavior and computerized assessments of cognitive performance could be integrated to investigate the effects of socially exhibited moods on the cognitive performance of individuals. The second study shows that batteries of ALDM running in parallel can provide unique information on the influence of the presence of others on task performance. Finally, the last study shows that networks of ALDM test units can also be used to study issues related to social transmission and cultural evolution. Combined together, these three studies demonstrate clearly that ALDM testing is a highly promising experimental tool for bridging the gap in the animal literature between research on individual cognition and research on social cognition. Video Link The video component of this article can be found at http://www.jove.com/video/52798/

In order to be made aware of bioethical issues related to their disciplines, undergraduate studen... more In order to be made aware of bioethical issues related to their disciplines, undergraduate students in biology and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of XXX are required to enroll in the bioethics course “Introduction to Bioethics”. This paper describes the chances and challenges faced when teaching a large number of undergraduate biology and pharmaceutical sciences students. Attention is drawn to the relevance and specific ethical issues that biology and pharmaceutical sciences students may be confronted with, and how these could be integrated into ethics curricula. Results from a survey addressing the knowledge and opinion of students taking the course in spring semester 2012, 2013, and 2014 are presented and discussed. Finally, we describe the lessons learned and how we have improved the course based on students’ feedback throughout the following years.

Humans have the capacity to use stimuli interchangeably by forming equivalence classes, and this ... more Humans have the capacity to use stimuli interchangeably by forming equivalence classes, and this ability seems to be supported by our language system. According to Sidman and Tailby (Conditional discrimination vs. matching to sample: an expansion of the testing paradigm. J Exp Anal Behav 37:5–22, 1982), the formation of equivalence classes require that three relations are derived among the class members, and past experiments have shown that one of these relations, i.e., symmetry, corresponding to the ability to reverse a relation (if A ? B, then B ? A), is extremely difficult to obtain in non-human animals. Because language development and the ability to form equivalence classes both co-occur in children with an increased ability to form categories, the current study tested the idea that category learning might promote symmetry in a nonhuman primate species. In Experiment 1, twelve Guinea baboons (Papio papio) were trained to associate 60 pictures of bears and 60 pictures of cars to two category labels, before being tested in symmetry trials. In Experiment 2, symmetry was trained and tested by reversing the association order between labels and pictures, using a new set of stimuli. In both experiments, the baboons successfully demonstrated category discrimination, but had only a weak (though significant) tendency to respond in accordance with symmetry during test trials. Altogether, our results confirm that symmetry is inherently

The aim of the present study was to provide a list of psychological variables likely to explain c... more The aim of the present study was to provide a list of psychological variables likely to explain cannabis abuse among adolescents and young adults based on the following psychological risk factors: anxiety, depression, difficulty in describing feelings, difficulty in identifying feelings, and external oriented thought. The analysis was based on the multiple logistic regression technique; the step-wise procedure showed that only anxiety, depression, and difficulty in describing feelings were retained in the final model. Following this, additive versus interactive models under different assumptions between the three independent variables were also assessed. The key findings of this study are twofold: (a) anxiety was revealed to be the primary risk factor for cannabis abuse and (b) no interaction between the aforementioned factors proved to be significantly informative in explaining high risk cannabis abuse. Findings were discussed in the context of the current knowledge of the relationship between anxious and depressive symptoms and higher risk of substance abuse and dependence.

Social media have significantly penetrated our lives and consequently have modified many of our b... more Social media have significantly penetrated our lives and consequently have modified many of our behaviors and our brain activities. Virtual Collective Consciousness (VCC) is a promising framework to understand the mechanisms underlying these new virtual channels of communication. To illustrate this idea, VCC was first shown to be captured through analyzing a 6640-word corpus from 333 respondents about Facebook contribution to the Tunisian revolution and then by tracing the Search Volume Index of specific keywords as a worldwide proxy of VCC during the Arab Spring. Indeed, few studies have shown recently that search engine query data have proven useful in offering insights about the complexity of our world (e.g., economic interests). To do so, data from Google Trends covering the 52 weeks of 2011 were extracted using the following search terms: Tunisian revolution, Egyptian revolution, revolution Facebook, and Twitter Facebook. the results revealed significant cross-correlations betw...

PLoS ONE, 2014

The affect-as-information hypothesis (e.g., , predicts that the positive or negative valence of o... more The affect-as-information hypothesis (e.g., , predicts that the positive or negative valence of our mood differentially affects our processing of the details of the environment. However, this hypothesis has only been tested with mood induction procedures and fairly complex cognitive tasks in humans. Here, six baboons (Papio papio) living in a social group had free access to a computerized visual search task on which they were over-trained. Trials that immediately followed a spontaneously expressed emotional behavior were analyzed, ruling out possible biases due to induction procedures. RTs following negatively valenced behaviors are slower than those following neutral and positively valenced behaviors, respectively. Thus, moods affect the performance of nonhuman primates tested in highly automatized tasks, as it does in humans during tasks with much higher cognitive demands. These findings reveal a presumably universal and adaptive mechanism by which moods influence performance in various ecological contexts.

This article is the result of an international research between law and ethics scholars from Univ... more This article is the result of an international research between law and ethics scholars from Universities in France and Switzerland, who have been closely collaborating with technical experts on the design and use of information and communication technologies in the fields of human health and security. The interdisciplinary approach is a unique feature and guarantees important new insights in the social, ethical and legal implications of these technologies for the individual and society as a whole. Its aim is to shed light on the tension between secrecy and transparency in the digital era. A special focus is put from the perspectives of psychology, medical ethics and European law on the contradiction between individuals' motivations for consented processing of personal data and their fears about unknown disclosure, transferal and sharing of personal data via information and communication technologies (named the ''privacy paradox''). Potential benefits and harms for the individual and society resulting from the use of computers, mobile phones, the Internet and social media are being discussed. Furthermore, the authors point out the ethical and legal limitations inherent to the processing of personal data in a democratic society governed by the rule of law. Finally, they seek to demonstrate that the impact of information and communication technology use on the individuals' well-being, the latter being closely correlated with a high level of fundamental rights protection in Europe, is a promising feature of the socalled ''edemocracy'' as a new way to collectively attribute meaning to large-scale online actions, motivations and ideas.

Background/Study Context: Associative memory deficit and executive functioning deficit are two al... more Background/Study Context: Associative memory deficit and executive functioning deficit are two alternative—but nonexclusive—accounts of the episodic memory deficit observed in aging. The first explain the episodic memory decline generally observed in aging by an associative memory deficit (memory decline per se), whereas the second explains it by an executive functioning deficit. This distinction could be critical in early discrimination between healthy aging and very mild Alzheimer’s-type dementia.

Methods: Memory performance was measured in older adults (n = 20) and paired younger participants (n = 20), whereas the facial expression and auditory context (spoken voice) associated with the face were manipulated between study and test. Recollection and familiarity were estimated using a remember/know judgment, and source memory performance was obtained depending on the information to retrieve.

Results: Although no between-group difference was observed for correctly recognized old faces, older participants made more false alarms than younger ones, thus revealing lower discriminability (d’). Facial expression change decreased recognition for all participants, whereas auditory context change decreased recognition only for younger participants. Remember/know judgments revealed age-related deficits in both recollection and familiarity, the relative decrease in familiarity reported by older adults was particularly large in the expression change conditions, and a disadvantage in source memory performance was particularly pronounced when the task was to retrieve auditory context associated with the face at study.

Conclusions: The present findings show that age-related associative memory differences occur with familiarity as well as recollection and are observed in situations that do not necessarily require conscious retrieval. This age-related decline is more prominent for multimodal (face–auditory context) than for intraitem (face-expression) associations. The value of exploring both memory trace and memory judgment was discussed, and potential applications for the development of neuropsychological tools for memory assessment in aging were highlighted.

North American Journal of Psychology (In Press), 2015

The present study investigates the effects of emotional unconscious context on recognizing elemen... more The present study investigates the effects of emotional unconscious context on recognizing elements as being part of a social representation(SR). The subliminal priming paradigm was used where a subliminal facial expression (happy vs. angry) was presented prior to a target sentence, which was an item belonging either to central or peripheral elements of the SR of higher education studied by Lo Monaco, Lheureux and Halimi-Falkowicz (2008). Two factors were manipulated in this experiment: emotional priming (positive, negative, and no priming)crossed with the structural status of items (central vs. peripheral) in a mixed design. Two dependent measures were recorded: the yes/no responses and reaction time. Overall, the results support the idea that the structural status of the target items was preserved while in the negative emotional priming condition, as participants tended to be slower to respond “No” to central elements compared with the no priming and positive priming conditions. Moreover, our findings suggest that central elements are always recognized as such even if the unconscious context varies. Finally, this study revealed the insensitivity of central elements to unconscious context variations, a point that is not declared by the theory. Hence, our findings may contribute to the further development of central core theory by taking into consideration subtle contextual manipulation in follow-up studies.

Social media has penetrated individual and collective lives to a huge extent and consequently mod... more Social media has penetrated individual and collective lives to a huge extent and consequently modified many of our online and offline behaviors. Public and private organizations worldwide would therefore greatly benefit from a better understanding of the fundamental principles governing the individual and collective behaviours of people connected through social media...

Effects of stimulus duration and inter-letter spacing were studied in a letter-in-string identifi... more Effects of stimulus duration and inter-letter spacing were studied in a letter-in-string identification paradigm. Participants were shown strings of 5 random consonants (e.g., PGKDM) centered on fixation and were asked to identify the letter that had appeared at a post-cued location. Stimulus duration was manipulated in Experiment 1 (13 ms – 91 ms), and inter-letter spacing manipulated in Experiment 2 (for a fixed stimulus duration of 26 ms). We contrasted performance to outer-letters (positions1 and 5) with non-central inner letters (positions 2 and 4), the first-letter (position 1) with the final letter (position 5), and the central-letter (position 3) with the other inner letters (positions 2 and 4). The outer-letter advantage and the first-letter advantage were present throughout the entire range of exposure durations, whereas the central-letter advantage increased with longer exposures. On the other hand, increased spacing reduced both the outer-letter advantage and the first-letter advantage, whereas it led to a greater central-letter advantage. Changes in acuity and crowding as a function of stimulus exposure and inter-letter spacing, can account for this pattern of results.

The Huffington Post US, Dec 27, 2013

After the success of four editions of Whitacre's worldwide virtual choir and all the media covera... more After the success of four editions of Whitacre's worldwide virtual choir and all the media coverage of the event, one might ask: what's new with one more reading about the virtual choir this time? Maybe the answer is the onstage participation via Skype of 32 performers from different countries as part of an ongoing live performance with all the synchronization headaches it involves.

International Relations and Security Network (ISN), Dec 11, 2013

""Was Tunisia’s 2011 uprising a ‘Facebook Revolution’? Absolutely, argues Yousri Marzouki. The cy... more ""Was Tunisia’s 2011 uprising a ‘Facebook Revolution’? Absolutely, argues Yousri Marzouki. The cyber-battle won by the activists and Facebook Corporation was critical to the success of the uprising. In fact, Facebook remains embedded in the ‘political unconscious’ of the Tunisian people.

By Yousri Marzouki for ISN
""

Computer Systems Experiences of Users with and without Disabilities: An Evaluation Guide for Professionals. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press

Journal of Comparative Psychology, Jun 2013

Recent studies of monkeys and apes have shown that these animals can solve relational-matching-to... more Recent studies of monkeys and apes have shown that these animals can solve relational-matching-tosample (RMTS) problems, suggesting basic abilities for analogical reasoning. However, doubts remain as to the actual cognitive strategies adopted by nonhuman primates in this task. Here, we used dual-task paradigms to test 10 baboons in the RMTS problem under three conditions of memory load. Our three test conditions allowed different predictions, depending on the strategy (i.e., flat memorization of the percept, reencoding of the percept, or relational processing) that they might use to solve RMTS problems. Results support the idea that the baboons process both the items and the abstract (same and different) relations in this task.

On February 23, 2013 in the capital of Tunisia, a group of high-school students shot a Harlem Sha... more On February 23, 2013 in the capital of Tunisia, a group of high-school students shot a Harlem Shake video. These kids picked up the viral wave that hit the Internet in February 2013. About 9 months earlier, DJ Baauer released the song that has since become the soundtrack of thousands of other short videos on which people, following an established pattern, dance like crazy to his music. As accurately put by Gilad Lotan, VP of Research and Development at SocialFlow, in the opening of his excellent data-driven analysis of the phenomenon: "If you still have not heard of the Harlem Shake you must be living in a cave". Fortunately, the Tunisian kids do not live in a cave. But, at first blush, there is no reason why we should focus on their version rather than the thousands of others.

Acta Psychologica, 2013

Earlier studies have suggested that information from a prime stimulus can be integrated with targ... more Earlier studies have suggested that information from a prime stimulus can be integrated with target information even when the two stimuli appear at different spatial locations. Here, we examined such location invariance in a masked repetition priming paradigm with single letter and word stimuli. In order to neutralize effects of acuity and spatial attention on prime processing, subliminal prime stimuli always appeared on fixation. Target location varied randomly from trial to trial along the horizontal meridian at one of seven possible locations for letter stimuli (−7° to +7°) and three positions for word stimuli (−4°, 0°, +4°). Speed of responding to letter and word targets was affected by target location, and by priming, but the size of repetition priming effects did not vary as a function of target location. These results suggest that masked repetition priming is mediated by representations that integrate information about object identity independently of object location.

The influence of Facebook in social life keeps constantly growing. Recently, the communication of... more The influence of Facebook in social life keeps constantly growing. Recently, the communication of information has been vital to the success of the Tunisian revolution, and Facebook was its main ''catalyst.'' This study examines the key reasons that explain Facebook's contribution to this historical event, as perceived by Tunisian Internet users. To do so, we launched this study 5 days after the fall of the regime using an online questionnaire in which participants (N = 333) first rated the importance of Facebook in the Tunisian revolution and then explained the reasons for their ratings. A cluster analysis based on the Euclidean distance between the most frequent words in the participants' text corpus (6,640 words), revealed three main clusters that we interpret as follows: 1: Facebook political function, 2: Facebook informational function, and 3: Facebook media platform function. It is likely that these factors reflect the dynamic of Tunisian cyberspace and the Tunisian Internet users' collective consciousness during the revolution.