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Presentation
I am a Full professor of epistemology and cognitive psychology at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) and director of a research group on attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders (ADHD). I am interested in brain imagery, cognitive neuropsychology and metacognition. My other interests are the study of consciousness as well as executive functions and their assessment in ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).
Training
I have undergone my undergraduate studies (B.Sc.) and master degree (M.Sc.) in cognitive psychology at l'Université de Montréal. Thanks to a doctoral grant from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), I spent one year in Paris at the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (LSCP) of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Humaines in Paris in 1982-1983 under the supervision of professor Jacques Mehler. I received my Ph.D. degree in psychology with a specialization in linguistic and cognition from the University of Montreal in 1987 under the supervision of professor Vaira Vike-Freiberga who, after her retirement from the university, became the President of Latvian Republic, her native country, from 1999 to 2007. I was also appointed as an Assistant professor at Université Laval (Québec, CA) for 5 years. I received a Fulbright fellowship in 1992 to do research and teaching at the Institute for Literacy Studies of the City University of New-York (CUNY) and the following year at Teacher's College of Columbia University (New-York) at the Department of International & Transcultural Studies. After, two exciting years spent in New York city, I returned to Montréal in 1995 to start a new appointment at Université du Québec a Montréal where I currently do teaching and research as a Full Professor.
Activities
For several years, I have been implied in the organisation and active participation in congresses, a good way to meet interesting people ! I was organizer of the 2002 regional congress of the International Association for Cognitive Education (IACEP), held in Montreal. In 2000, I organized an important symposium entitled : Metacognition, selfregulation and education, for the Jean Piaget Society congress. The same year, I also organized another symposium at the Société Québécoise de Recherche en Psychologie (SQRP) on Metacognition and cognitive neuropsychology. I have also given numerous talks at national and international levels. I am on the editorial boards of the Journal of Research in Reading, McGill Journal of Education and Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology and I have been a peer reviewer for several journals (Journal of Attention Disorders, Psychologie Française, etc.)
Interests
My first interest for metacognition has evolved towards executive functions applied to children, adolescents and adults, in typical and special needs populations (ADHD, ASD). For some years now, I have been using functional brain imagery (fMRI) with children and parents of children with ADHD at the Institut Universitaire de Geriatrie de Montreal (IUGM). I am a member of the Cognitive Sciences Institute and the Health and Society Institute both of UQÀM. My book, L'Alphabétisation : Métacognitions et Interventions, was publish at DeBoeck in 1996 (1994, 1998 at Logiques). The book gives guidelines for metacognitive training in order to help reading skills in low literate adults. I have also been implied in numerous articles and book chapters. My papers and talks can be classified according to the following categories : neurological correlates of attention deficit and hyperactivlty disorders, neuropsychology of attention deficit and hyperactivlty disorders and of autism spectrum disorders, metacognition and reading comprehension. More largely, I am interested in cognition and language. My friends and colleagues of philosophy departements (UQÀM, Université Laval, University of Iowa) drew my attention on the domain of consciousness.