Situations restructure the congruency between action and valence in the action-evaluation effect

Abstract

The action-evaluation effect indicates that the processing of affective valence is affected by bodily actions. However, whether this effect is based on bodily simulation or situational priming is unknown. Moreover, P2 is a neural marker for this effect, suggesting the integration between valence and actions. Whether the P2 component is modulated by the situation is also unknown. In this study, we tested this effect in multiple situations to examine (1) whether this effect is dependent on the situation and (2) the amplitude of P2 is modulated by the situation. During the experiments, participants pushed/pulled computer mice to verify the valence of affective words in far-near (Experiment 1), front-back (Experiments 2a-2b), and up-down (Experiments 3a-3b) situations. Pulling (or pushing) mice responding to positive (or negative) words were treated as the congruent condition, while the opposite combination was the incongruent condition. In the far-near situation, participants’ response times were faster and the amplitude of the P2 component was smaller in the congruent condition than the incongruent one; however, these results were reversed in other situations. The results suggested that the congruency of action-evaluation effect was restructured by the situation. Therefore, the action-evaluation effect might be based on situational priming.

The action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE) a benchmark finding for embodiment - A meta-analysis

“…Since the original study by Glenberg and Kaschak (2002) was conducted with sentences as materials, one inclusion criterion was that the stimulus material had to consist of sentences that explicitly denote a toward or away movement. Studies were excluded when the stimulus material consisted of words, for example, valenced words (Freina, Baroni, Borghi, & Nicoletti, 2009;Wang et al, 2018), or words denoting objects that are typically handled with a movement towards or away from the body (Van Dam, Rueschemeyer, Lindemann, & Bekkering, 2010; van Dam, Brazil, Bekkering, & Rueschemeyer, 2014) or when sentences were used which do not clearly describe a toward or away movement (e.g., state description (Kaup, Lüdtke, & Maienborn, 2010)). We also ruled out studies that presented whole texts as stimulus material (e.g., a text describing a protagonist making metaphorical forward movements (Horchak, Giger, & Pochwatko, 2014)).…”

Nanoscale Imaging of Biomolecules using Molecule Anchorable Gel-enabled Nanoscale In-situ Fluorescence Microscopy

“…Most ExM protocols use Proteinase K digestion to enable expansion, which destroys endogenous epitopes. In addition, most protocols have only demonstrated ~4-fold expansion in tissues [3][4][5][6]8,9,12,13 with a mechanically delicate hydrogel, providing only an effective resolution of ~70 nm with a 1.15 numerical aperture (NA;~280-nm diffraction-limit)…”