Dernières publications HAL

Can simulated emotional reactions displayed by embodied virtual agents influence human moral behaviour? Specifically, can they affect honesty, a core moral norm, even if the reaction is neither sentient nor genuine? In a preregistered and incentivised experiment, 372 participants played a repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with a cooperative agent whose simulated facial reactions were designed to promote cooperation, defection, or neither. We then measured honesty in two unrelated tasks without emotional feedback, where dishonesty had either only self-regarding consequences (Mind Game) or also other-regarding consequences (Deception Game). When dishonesty affected the agent's outcomes, honesty remained relatively high given the stakes, as if the agent's outcomes were treated as morally relevant. In contrast, when dishonesty had no consequences for the agent, honesty depended on prior exposure: participants were more honest after interacting with a defection-promoting agent than with a cooperation-promoting one, consistent with moral compensation. These results suggest that even brief, speech-free interactions with emotionally expressive yet non-sentient agents can influence moral behaviour, suggesting that people respond to such agents as they would to real social partners. This raises important questions about the ethical impact of simulated emotion in human-AI interactions.

Pseudoneglect is a spatial bias favoring the left side of space observed in healthy individuals, typically shown by a leftward deviation when bisecting horizontal lines. Although environmental and individual factors are known to modulate this bias, findings remain inconsistent. This study aimed to provide new insights into the influence of four environmental factors on pseudoneglect: Distance (near, far), Environment (real, immersive Virtual Reality (iVR)), Tool (pen, laser pointer), Stimulus (line, object), while controlling handedness. Fifty-five participants (M = 20.6 years, SD = 2.3, 35 right-handed) completed three line bisection tasks in a real environment (paper-and-pencil at near distance, laser at near and far distances) and three in iVR: (laser at near and far distances, French baguette bisection at near distance). A significant Tool effect emerged: pseudoneglect appeared only in the paper-and-pencil bisection task, while a rightward bias observed with a laser pointer. Stimulus also had a significant effect, with a more rightward bias for the baguette than for lines. No main effects of Distance, Environment, or Handedness were found. Several interpretations are discussed, such as inter-individual variability, coding of peripersonal and extrapersonal spaces, and interaction between semantic and attentional networks. Our results emphasize the need to homogenize methodologies across studies.

The influence of space-number associations on action parameters has been widely reported. Yet, some recent studies claim that space-number associations are only the consequence of lateralized actions. However, little is known about the actual influence of action on number representations, and how this influence interacts with the influence of space. Hence, our goal was to further examine the influence of action on number representations, and to characterize the nature of this influence by manipulating both action direction and magnitude. To this end, we used a saccade task followed by a random number generation task (Experiment 1). We show that saccade amplitude shapes number representations, but that this influence depends on saccade direction as it is found for rightward saccades only. Moreover, the influence of target spatial position on the numbers generated vanishes when no action is executed (Experiment 2). In our view, these results demonstrate the critical role of action in space-number associations. We suggest that the influence of space on number representations is only observed through lateralized actions. These findings shed new light on conflicting results in the literature about the influences of space and action, and provide important insights into the mechanisms behind space-number associations.

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<div><p>Preparing an ocular saccade is known to affect not only the perception of various visual features, such as orientation, contrast, and numerosity, but also sound localization. In the present study, we tested whether saccade preparation influences the perception of other auditory features, such as the pitch of a tone played before eye movement. We also examined whether pitch could influence saccade characteristics, as an instance of response compatibility effects. At the beginning of each trial, a visual cue indicated that a disk would appear above or below fixation. Participants were then presented with a tone of varying frequency and were instructed either to make a saccade toward the peripheral disk after the tone ended or to maintain fixation on the center of the screen. Pitch was consistently overestimated when the disk appeared in the upper visual field compared with the lower visual field. However, we found no evidence that saccade preparation affected pitch perception and no evidence of response compatibility effects. These findings suggest that vertical shifts of visuospatial attention are sufficient to impact pitch discrimination, likely through the activation of the spatial representation inherent to pitch.</p></div>