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Do emotions or gender drive our actions? A study of motor distractibility
Ambron, Elisabetta Rumiati, Raffaella I. Foroni, Francesco
Ambron, Elisabetta
Rumiati, Raffaella I.
Foroni, Francesco
Abstract
People’s interaction with the social environment depends on the ability to attend social cues with human faces being a key vehicle of this information. This study explores whether directing the attention to gender or emotion of a face interferes with ongoing actions. In two experiments, participants reached for one of two possible targets by relying on one of two features of a face, namely, emotion (Experiment 1) or gender (Experiment 2) of a non-target stimulus (a task-relevant distractor). Participants’ reaching movements deviated toward the task-relevant distractor in both experiments. However, when attending to the gender of the face the distractor effect was modulated by both gender (task-relevant feature) and emotion (task-irrelevant feature), with the largest movement deviation being observed toward angry male faces. Endogenous allocation of attention toward faces elicits a competing motor response to the ongoing action and the emotional content of the face contributes to this process at a more automatic and implicit level.
Keywords
reaching movements, distractor effect, emotion, gender
Date
2016
Type
Journal article
Journal
Cognitive Neuroscience
Book
Volume
7
Issue
1-4
Page Range
160-169
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Behavioural and Health Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
File Access
Controlled