The well-known experiments of Nisbett and Wilson lead to the conclusion that we have no introspective access to our decision-making processes. Johansson et al. have recently developed an original protocol consisting in manipulating covertly the relationship between the subjects' intended choice and the outcome they were presented with: in 79.6% of cases, they do not detect the manipulation and provide an explanation of the choice they did not make, confirming the findings of Nisbett and Wilson. We have reproduced this protocol, while introducing for some choices an expert guidance to the description of this choice. The subjects who were assisted detected the manipulation in 80% of cases. Our experiment confirms Nisbett and Wilson's findings that we are usually unaware of our decision processes, but goes further by showing that we can access them through specific mental acts.

The process of socialisation into the academic discourse community involves acquiring mastery of its established genres. While written academic genres have been intensively studied, spoken genres are relatively under‐researched. This study focuses on one such spoken research genre, the scientific conference presentation (CP) in English, and specifically on the introduction section, a sub‐genre which often poses particular problems for presenters. A move analysis of the CP introductions shows that their rhetorical structure is markedly different from that of the research article, and that these differences are closely related to the contextual and epistemological characteristics of the genre. The interpersonal relations set up by the allocation of speaker and addressee roles through the use of personal pronouns are also discussed. Through a contrastive analysis of the CP introductions and those of the corresponding proceedings papers, the article examines how speakers facilitate information processing and create rapport with the audience. The data comprise video recordings of 44 CPs from 3 scientific fields (geology, medicine, and physics) and a smaller corpus of 13 corresponding articles from the physics conference proceedings.

Analysing the scientific conference presentation (CP), A methodological overv... ASp, 39-40 | 2003 10 The relative absence of passive constructions in the CP can for example be directly related to certain features of the live communicative event. Demands on the real-time 2. 3.