Le présent suffit-il à faire l'histoire?

Our study discusses the ability of the présent historique, a tense « plus abstrait et donc plus difficile à comprendre » [more abstract and therefore more difficult to understand] (Béguin 1998, p. 36), to replace the passé simple (PS) in historical narration. It is based on a diachronic corpus of extracts taken from history books on the French Revolution, ranging from the beginning of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century. Firstly, we justify the primacy of the passé simple for historical narrative, while considering the wider areas of tense and aspect. After a description of the corpus and a summary of the hypotheses under study, we present our quantitative results with the aim of assessing the use of the présent historique in the corpus in comparison with other tenses. Finally, we study our corpus from a qualitative perspective and we try to conclude upon our initial hypotheses. © Revue Romane.

Cognitive neuroscience and (very) high level vision

THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE is two-fold, first to provide a general overview of two of the main cognitive neuroscientific techniques available, specifically functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS); and secondly to apply these techniques to elaborate a discussion of an aspect of higher level vision, namely implied motion, that is the perception of movement from a static image.

The vision strategy of golf putting

Golfers, coaches and researchers alike, have all keyed in on golf putting as an important aspect of overall golf performance. Of the three principle putting tasks (green reading, alignment and the putting action phase), the putting action phase has attracted the most attention from coaches, players and researchers alike. This phase includes the alignment of the club with the ball, the swing, and ball contact. A significant amount of research in this area has focused on measuring golfer’s vision strategies with eye tracking equipment. Unfortunately this research suffers from a number of shortcomings, which limit its usefulness. The purpose of this thesis was to address some of these shortcomings. The primary objective of this thesis was to re-evaluate golfer’s putting vision strategies using binocular eye tracking equipment and to define a new, optimal putting vision strategy which was associated with both higher skill and success. In order to facilitate this research, bespoke computer software was developed and validated, and new gaze behaviour criteria were defined. Additionally, the effects of training (habitual) and competition conditions on the putting vision strategy were examined, as was the effect of ocular dominance. Finally, methods for improving golfer’s binocular vision strategies are discussed, and a clinical plan for the optometric management of the golfer’s vision is presented. The clinical management plan includes the correction of fundamental aspects of golfers’ vision, including monocular refractive errors and binocular vision defects, as well as enhancement of their putting vision strategy, with the overall aim of improving performance on the golf course. This research has been undertaken in order to gain a better understanding of the human visual system and how it relates to the sport performance of golfers specifically. Ultimately, the analysis techniques and methods developed are applicable to the assessment of visual performance in all sports.