Research interests:

  The conventional cognitive framework rests on the existence of a powerful cognitive unconscious. Indeed, most psychological models heavily rely on the possibility of performing manipulations and transformations of unconscious representations using algorithms that are unable to operate while accommodating the functional constraints of conscious thought. Most of my research is aimed at exploring the power and the limits of an alternative framework, in which the only representations people create and manipulate are those which form the momentary phenomenal experience.

    The main question this alternative view has to address is why the phenomenal experience of adult people consists of perceptions and representations of the world that are generally isomorphic with the world structure. Our proposal, with Annie Vinter, is that this isomorphism is the end-product of a progressive organization that emerges thanks to elementary associative processes, which take the conscious representations themselves as the stuff on which they operate. We summarize this thesis in the concept of Self-Organizing Consciousness.  Our approach is supported by a computer-implemented model of word segmentation, PARSER (which is freely available as a module in U-Learn).

    Our analysis opens to the surprising conclusion that there is no need for the concepts of unconscious representations and knowledge and, a fortiori, for the notion of unconscious inferences. Our dynamical framework is more parsimonious than the prevalent conceptions in cognitive and developmental sciences because it manages to account for very sophisticated adaptive functions while respecting (and even taking advantage of ) the constraints inherent to the conscious/attentional system, such as limited capacity, seriality of processing, and quick forgetting.