The concept of motor fluency, defined as the positive marking associated with the easy realisation of a movement, is used to explain the various compatibility effects observed between emotional valence and lateral space. In this work, we propose that these effects arise from the motor fluency simulation induced by emotionally positive stimuli. In a perceptual line bisection task (Landmark task) we primed each trial with an emotionally positive word, negative word, neutral word or no word before asking participants to verbally indicate the side of the vertical mark on the horizontal line (Experiment 1) or to indicate the longest side of the line (Experiment 2). After positive words and for bisected lines, participants' responses were biased towards their dominant side for both right- and left-handers and similarly under the two different instructions. As movements of the dominant hand or in the dominant hemispace have been described as the most fluent lateral actions, this result supports our hypothesis that positive stimuli induce a mental simulation of fluent lateral movements. Furthermore, the replication of the effect under opposite instructions between the two experiments is in line with an explanation in terms of a bias in response selection rather than variations in perceptual content.
According to the body specificity hypothesis, the way we interact with our environment participates in our conceptualization of concepts and word meanings. For instance, valence is associated to horizontal space because of the motor fluency by which one acts with one's dominant hand. We propose that the decisive factor in the compatibility effects between valence and lateral actions is the interaction between the fluency of response movement and the situational constraints of the task. In a valence judgement task with positive and negative words, right-handers (Experiment 1) and left-handers (Experiment 2) responded with lateralized actions of either their dominant or their nondominant hand. To do so, we used a response device that was either congruent or noncongruent with the fluency of the response hand. Results highlighted that when the response device was congruent with the fluency of the responding hand, response times to positive evaluations were shorter than those to negative evaluations. Conversely, when the response device was noncongruent with the fluency of the responding hand, we observed faster responses for negative evaluations than for positive evaluations. Furthermore, we obtained similar patterns for right- and left-handers, supporting the idea that compatibility effects are driven by the situated fluency of the responding hand.
This study aims to demonstrate the effect of action fluency on emotional evaluation, specifically to show that neutral words can be evaluated positively or negatively depending on motor activity and evaluative setting. Right-handers naturally tend to associate positive (negative) valence to the right (left) part of space (Casasanto, 2009). We extend these associations to lateralized behaviors by studying the combined effect of motor fluency of lateral arm movements and the evaluative scale on the subjective evaluation of neutral words. Three experiments evidenced that, for right-handers, the realization of fluent rightward arm movements and the use of an evaluative scale congruent with their valence/laterality associations (left negative, right positive) led to a positive evaluation of neutral words, while non-fluent leftward movements and an incongruent scale led to a negative evaluation. This study demonstrates that emotion-action associations are experience-based, and influenced by functional and situational constraints.
It is now well established that motor fluency affects cognitive processes, including memory. In two experiments participants learned a list of words and then performed a recognition task. The original feature of our procedure is that before judging the words they had to perform a fluent gesture (i.e., typing a letter dyad). The dyads comprised letters located on either the right or left side of the keyboard. Participants typed dyads with their right or left index finger; the required movement was either very small (dyad composed of adjacent letters, Experiment 1) or slightly larger (dyad composed of letters separated by one key, experiment 2). The results show that when the gesture was performed in the ipsilateral space the probability of recognizing a word increased (to a lesser extent it is the same with the dominant hand, experiment 2). Moreover, a binary regression logistic highlighted that the probability of recognizing a word was proportional to the speed by which the gesture was performed. These results are discussed in terms of a feeling of familiarity emerging from motor discrepancy.Keywords Memory . Fluency . Discrepancy . GestureThe way people conceive the world is intrinsically dependent on body specificity and on the way they interact with their environment (Casasanto, 2009). The aim of this study was to extend previous findings (i.e., typing activity) by showing that recognition judgment could be influenced by the hand one uses and the space in which a response is given.Manual dominance is one of the main body specificities. The results observed in studies of typing activity showed that skilled typists on the QWERTY keyboard preferred letters typed with the right hand to those typed with the left hand. But when participants were asked to perform the preference task while holding a motor plan in memory (i.e., dual task), the skilled typists' preference was attenuated when the motor plan involved the same finger used to type the presented dyads (see Beilock & Holt, 2007). Jasmin and Casasanto (2012) confirmed that preference judgments are influenced by motor fluency caused by digit-specific typing simulation (the so-called QWERTY effect). Yang, Gallo, and Beilock (2009) showed that the fluency with which participants type the letter dyads to be recognized influences their recognition judgment. Participants found it easier to remember letter dyads typed with two different fingers than those typed with one finger. Indeed, typing a letter dyad with two different fingers is easier than typing a letter dyad with one finger.If manual dominance is one of the main body specificities, laterality is another one: an individual's most fluent actions are those executed with the dominant hand on the dominant side (i.e., for a right-hander, movements of the right hand on the right side). Classic studies from aim-pointing tasks have already demonstrated that ipsilateral actions are carried out more easily and faster than contralateral actions for both the dominant and the non-dominant hand (Fisk & Goodale, ...
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