Résumés /Abstracts
Publications sur
l'action / Papers on Action
Elisabeth Pacherie
Motor images,
self-consciousness, and autism
In Autism as an executive
disorder, J. Russell (ed.) , Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp.
215-255.
How does agency relate to
self-awareness? What does agency contribute to our understanding of mental
states? Recently, there has been a renewal of interest on the part of both
philosophers and psychologists in the role played by agency in the development
of self-world dualism, that is, in the emergence both of a conception of an
objective world existing independently of our perception of it and of a
conception of ourselves as agents in that world who entertain representations
(accurate or inaccurate) about it. It seems that our theorising about these
questions could benefit from considering recent studies of the neurophysiology
of action and of the nature of motor intention and imagery. Moreover, such
neurophysiological work could also shed light on the neuropsychological origins
of psychopathologies in which executive and mentalisation deficits are
associated. One such pathology is schizophrenia (Frith 1992); another is
autism.
In this chapter I argue that a
capacity for action plays a major role in the structuring of a unitary
experience of the world and in the development of self-world dualism. I further
argue that conscious access to the content of their motor representations give
subjects a primitive form of awareness of the relationship between their
representations and their actions and of their status as agents and as owners
of representations. It provides, furthermore, the basis for a progressive
elaboration of these notions. Finally, I suggest that a number of the
difficulties encountered by individuals with autism may have their common
origin in an impairment of action representations.
In the first section, I give a brief
review of a number of studies indicating that individuals with autism
experience both mentalising and executive difficulties and a review of the
current debate concerning the relationships between the two kinds of
dysfunctions. In the second section, a number of proposals stemming from work
in the neurophysiology of action are presented and discussed. The third section
considers the bearing of these proposals on problems confronted by
psychologists and philosophers of actionIn particular, I try to show how we can
make use of those ideas to defend a particular philosophical theory of action
and show how they can shed light on the relationship between action and the
development of self-awareness and theory of mind. In the final section, I
return to autism in order to offer a tentative taxonomy of a number of
executive dysfunctions from the perspective of the theory of action advocated
in the previous section. I suggest that the executive difficulties encountered
in subjects with autism may have their source in a specific impairment of their
motor representations and examine what consequences would ensue from such an
impairment.
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Troubles de l'agentivité et troubles de la conscience de
soi. Quelques hypothèses sur leurs liens dans l'autisme
In
Les neurosciences et la philosophie de l'action, sous la dir. de J.-L.
Petit, Paris, Vrin, 1997, pp. 363-386.
La
question du rôle de l'action dans le développement de la conscience de soi et
de la compréhension des états mentaux d'autrui fait depuis quelques années
l'objet d'un intérêt croissant tant en philosophie qu'en psychologie. Je
présente certaines hypothèses sur la nature des liens entre les
dysfonctionnements exécutifs, les troubles de la conscience de soi et les
troubles de la mentalisation qui sont conjointement observés dans l'autisme. Je
soutiens l'idée que plusieurs des difficultés rencontrées par les autistes
pourraient avoir une source commune dans un trouble de la représentation de
l'action. Ces hypothèses s'appuient à la fois sur certaines hypothèses
philosophiques développées par Livet (1996a, 1996b) sur la nature des
intentions et sur certaines thèses développées en neuropsychologie, notamment
par Jeannerod (1994) sur la nature des liens entre imagerie et intention
motrices. Je commence par donner une brève description des principales
caractéristiques autistiques et des données susceptibles d'éclairer la relation
entre les dysfonctionnements exécutifs, les troubles de la conscience de soi et
les troubles de la mentalisation observés chez les autistes. Je présente
ensuite brièvement certaines des thèses développées par Jeannerod et la lecture
qu'en propose Livet. J'essaie ensuite de montrer quelle analyse des relations
entre représentation de l'action et conscience de soi elles peuvent suggérer.
J'en dérive pour finir certaines hypothèses sur les liens possibles entre
troubles exécutifs et troubles de la mentalisation chez les autistes.
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Looking for the agent: an
investigation into consciousness of action and self-consciousness in
schizophrenic patients
(En collaboration avec E. Daprati,
N. Franck, N. Georgieff, J. Proust, J. Dalery & M. Jeannerod), Cognition,
65, 1997, pp. 71-86.
The abilities to attribute an action
to its proper agent and to understand its meaning when it is produced by
someone else are basic aspects of human social communication. Several
psychiatric syndromes, such as schizophrenia, seem to lead to a dysfunction of
the awareness of one's own action as well as the recognition of actions
performed by others. Such syndromes offer a framework for studying the
determinants of agency, the ability to correctly attribute actions to their
veridical source. Thirty normal subjects and 30 schizophrenic patients with and
without hallucinations and/or delusional experiences were required to execute
simple finger and wrist movements, without direct visual control of their hand.
The image of either their own hand or an alien hand executing the same or a
different movement were presented on a TV-screen in real time. The task for the
subjects was to discriminate whether the hand presented on the screen was their
own or not. Hallucinating and deluded schizophrenic patients were more impaired
in discriminating their own hand from the alien hand than the non-hallucinating
ones, and tended to misattribute the alien hand to themselves. Results are
discussed according to a model of action control. A tentative description of
the mechanisms leading to action consciousness is proposed.
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Représentations motrices, imitation et théorie de l'esprit
Subjectivité
et Conscience d'Agir: Approches Cognitives et Cliniques de la Psychose, sous la
dir. de H. Grivois & J. Proust, Paris, PUF, 1998, pp. 207-248.
Le
syndrome de l'autisme infantile se caractérise par des déficits spécifiques
dans les domaines de l'imitation, de la perception et de l'expression des
émotions, de la mentalisation, de l'interaction sociale, de la planification et
du contrôle de l'action, des aspects pragmatiques de la communication et du jeu
symbolique. La question des liens possibles entre ces différentes perturbations
vient immédiatement à l'esprit. Est-il possible de les faire toutes remonter à
une cause neuropsychologique commune? Peut-on à tout le moins mettre en
évidence des liens de causalité entre plusieurs des difficultés observées?
Je
commence par une brève présentation des principales données attestant de
l'existence de troubles de la mentalisation et de difficultés exécutives chez
les sujets autistes. Je me tourne ensuite vers le problème des rapports entre
intentions en action et intentions préalables. Je défends dans un premier temps
une conception de l'articulation entre ces deux types d'intentions fondée sur
la notion d'image motrice consciente. Prenant pour fil-conducteur l'analyse
proposée, j'essaie de montrer dans un deuxième temps comment les perturbations
exécutives rencontrées dans l'autisme pourraient découler d'un trouble
spécifique de la représentation de l'action. Je m'intéresse ensuite à
l'articulation entre théorie de l'action et théorie de l'esprit. J'examine tout
particulièrement le rôle joué par l'imitation dans le développement de la
compréhension des états mentaux. J'essaie de montrer comment sur la base de
l'hypothèse d'un trouble spécifique des représentations motrices on peut faire
le lien entre les troubles de la mentalisation et les perturbations exécutives
de l'autisme.
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Action monitoring,: lower,
higher and intermediate levels.
Developmental Science, 2, 3: 288-89.
James Russell claims that executive difficulties in both autism and
schizophrenia are likely to be due to impairments of action monitoring at
"a fairly high level". I argue that there is room for some
'intermediate' level of action-monitoring in between the higher and lower
levels he distinguishes and that impairments at this intermediate level may
play an important role in explaining some of the difficulties encountered by
both schizophrenic patients and subjects with autism.
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Mind and Language, 15, 4, 2000, pp.
400-432..
By distinguishing between prior
intentions and intentions in action, Searle has helped solve a number of
difficulties confronted by the earlier versions of the causal theory of
actions. Yet this distinction also raises important new issues. In particular,
once a distinction is posited between two types of intentions, one must specify
what the exact nature of their respective contents is and explain how the two
types of intentions are connected. I suggest that in addressing those issues we
could benefit from the insights provided by recent work in the cognitive
neuroscience of action. I try to show how this work can help us give a more
precise characterization of the content of intentions in action and bridge the
gap between prior intentions and intentions in action.
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