Research

I work with Professeur Stanislas Dehaene at Neurospin. My Ph. D. is about the mental representation of fractions in adults and children.

Using experimental cognitive psychology, we study the developpement of fractions’ understanding in children. A first study revealed that French children severely struggled to place fractions on a number line. With 80% of errors in 6th grade and still 45% in 10th grade, this work resulted in an alert note (in French) from the Scientific Council of the French Ministry of Education.

More generally, my research interests lie around the origins of the faculty of language. How did evolution wire our brain for the manipulation of abstract hierarchical structures? Which parts of human cultures emerged directly from this faculty (languages, mathematics, music…)? And how do our individual experiences shape our use of the language faculty?

Curriculum

• 2022–2025 (en cours): Ph. D. Student in Cognitive Science ED3C, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France
  supervised by S. Dehaene, UniCog, NeuroSpin (INSERM/CEA) / Collège de France (PSL)
• 2020–2022 : Master Student in Cognitive Science (Linguistic major), Université Paris-Cité / ENS-PSL (CogMaster), Paris, France
• 2020 : ERASMUS Exchange Student (M1), EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
• 2018–2022: Computer Department (L3-M2), ENS Rennes, Rennes, France.

Publications

In preparation

• Cauté, M. & Dehaene, S. (in prep). Error profile changes during sixth grade: a longitudinal study.

• Cauté, M., Potier-Watkins, C., He, C., & Dehaene, S. (in prep). Evolution of error types in the comprehension of fractions.

2024

• Cauté, M., Schlenker, P. & Chemla, E. (2024). Inconsistent effects of components as evidence for non-compositionality in chimpanzee face-gesture combinations? A response to Oña et al (2019). PeerJ, 12, e16800. Full article. Preprint. Note: due to an error regarding the author order in the manuscript, please cite this paper as Cauté, Schlenker & Chemla

2023

• Dehaene, S., Potier-Watkins, C., Cauté, M. & Groupe de travail “Évaluations et interventions” du CSEN (2023). Une inquiétante mécompréhension des nombres et surtout des fractions à l’entrée en sixième. Note d’alerte du CSEN, 2. Full note.

Other research

Posters

• Cauté, M., Potier-Watkins, C., He, C., & Dehaene, S. (2024). Evolution of error types in the understanding of fractions. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 46). Proceedings abstract. Poster

Reports

• Signatures of a “Language of thought” and its cross-modality, with M. Sablé-Meyer & S. Dehaene (2022).
• Comparing biases in humans and artificial neural networks (in French), with E. Chemla (2021).
• Optimal Transport for denoising EEG-MRI combined signals (in French), with P. Maurel, J. Coloigner & G. Lioi (2020).
• Automatic transcription of the syntax of canari songs (in French), with X. Hinaut (2019).