Olivier Mascaro
Research Scientist – CNRS
What makes humans so different from other species? To address this question, I focus on the ontogenetic roots of sociality in humans and on the interplay between cognition and culture. I am primarily interested in the social bases of learning, such as the mechanisms that infants and children use to map their social environment and to interact with others, especially in communicative contexts.
Ongoing project
Vicarious Social Touch perception in infants
The aim of this project is to investigate the physiological, behavioural and neural responses of infants to social-tactile interactions.
Project team lead
Olivier Mascaro
Project team lead
Louise Krisch
FoundTrust: The neurocognitive bases of epistemic trust
The willingness to believe communicated information (or epistemic trust) plays a central role in human cognitive development. The aim of this project is to characterize its development in the first years of life.
Project team lead
Olivier Mascaro
Investigating cognitive processes underlying food learning in infancy -F.E.E.D your mind
The aim of the F.E.E.D. your mind project is to shed light on the cognitive processes underlying food learning in infancy and provide empirical bases to design such interventions
Project team lead
Camille Rioux
Selected Publications
– Mascaro, O., Aguirre, M., Brun, M., Couderc, A., & Mercier, H. 2019. Nonverbal rhetoric: 2- to 4-year-old children select relevant evidence when trying to influence others. Developmental Psychology, 55(10), 2039-2047.
– Aguirre, M., Couderc, A., Epinat-Duclos, J. & Mascaro, O. 2019. Infants discriminate the source of social touch at stroking speeds eliciting maximal firing rates in CT-fibers. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.
– Mascaro, O. & Csibra, G. 2012. Representation of stable dominance relations by human infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 109, 6862-6867.
– Mascaro, O. & Sperber, D. 2009. The moral, epistemic and mindreading components of children’s vigilance towards deception. Cognition, 112, 367-380.