Do emotions or gender drive our actions? A study of motor distractibility. Issue 1 (1st October 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ambron, Elisabetta; Rumiati, Raffaella I.; Foroni, Francesco
• Is Part Of: Cognitive neuroscience. Volume 7:Issue 1/4(2016)
• Page Start: 160
• Page End: 169
• Publication Date: 2016-10-01
• Subjects: Reaching movements -- Distractor effect -- Emotion -- Gender; Cognitive neuroscience -- Periodicals; 612.8205
• DOI: 10.1080/17588928.2015.1085373
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1758-8928

Abstract

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.