Ana Carolina Saraiva, Friederike Schüür, Sven Bestmann
Abstract
Behavior is influenced by the emotional content-or valence-of stimuli in our environment. Positive stimuli facilitate approach, whereas negative stimuli facilitate defensive actions such as avoidance (flight) and attack (fight). Facilitation of approach or avoidance movements may also be influenced by whether it is the self that moves relative to a stimulus (self-reference) or the stimulus that moves relative to the self (object-reference), adding flexibility and context-dependence to behavior. Alternatively, facilitation of approach avoidance movements may happen in a pre-defined and muscle-specific way, whereby arm flexion is faster to approach positive (e.g., flexing the arm brings a stimulus closer) and arm extension faster to avoid negative stimuli (e.g., extending the arm moves the stimulus away). While this allows for relatively fast responses, it may compromise the flexibility offered by contextual influences. Here we asked under which conditions approach-avoidance actions are influenced by contextual factors (i.e., reference-frame). We manipulated the reference-frame in which actions occurred by asking participants to move a symbolic manikin (representing the self) toward or away from a positive or negative stimulus, and move a stimulus toward or away from the manikin. We also controlled for the type of movements used to approach or avoid in each reference. We show that the reference-frame influences approach-avoidance actions to emotional stimuli, but additionally we find muscle-specificity for negative stimuli in self-reference contexts. We speculate this muscle-specificity may be a fast and adaptive response to threatening stimuli. Our results confirm that approach-avoidance behavior is flexible and reference-frame dependent, but can be muscle-specific depending on the context and valence of the stimulus. Reference-frame and stimulus-evaluation are key factors in guiding approach-avoidance behavior toward emotional stimuli in our environment.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 24 November 2018.
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#6,398,722
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#9,375
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#68,816
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#411
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Altmetric has tracked 22,733,113 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 70th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 29,561 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 969 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 57% of its contemporaries.
