Motor Inhibition to Dangerous Objects: Electrophysiological Evidence for Task-dependent Aversive Affordances

Abstract

Previous work suggests that perception of an object automatically facilitates actions related to object grasping and manipulation. Recently, the notion of automaticity has been challenged by behavioral studies suggesting that dangerous objects elicit aversive affordances that interfere with encoding of an object's motor properties; however, related EEG studies have provided little support for these claims. We sought EEG evidence that would support the operation of an inhibitory mechanism that interferes with the motor encoding of dangerous objects, and we investigated whether such mechanism would be modulated by the perceived distance of an object and the goal of a given task. EEGs were recorded by 24 participants who passively perceived dangerous and neutral objects in their peripersonal, boundary, or extrapersonal space and performed either a reachability judgment task or a categorization task. Our results showed that greater attention, reflected in the visual P1 potential, was drawn by dangerous and reachable objects. Crucially, a frontal N2 potential, associated with motor inhibition, was larger for dangerous objects only when participants performed a reachability judgment task. Furthermore, a larger parietal P3b potential for dangerous objects indicated the greater difficulty in linking a dangerous object to the appropriate response, especially when it was located in the participants' extrapersonal space. Taken together, our results show that perception of dangerous objects elicits aversive affordances in a task-dependent way and provides evidence for the operation of a neural mechanism that does not code affordances of dangerous objects automatically, but rather on the basis of contextual information.

Human Brain Dynamics Dissociate Early Perceptual and Late Motor-Related Stages of Affordance Processing

“…In the field of affordance perception, there has been debate regarding whether it is an automated process or not. Some researchers argue that affordance perception is an automatic process due to its fast and effortless nature (Tucker & Ellis, 1998; Goslin, Dixon, Fischer, Cangelosi, & Ellis, 2012; Bonner & Epstein, 2017; Harel, Nador, Bonner, & Epstein, 2022), whereas others suggest that it is not automated but rather highly contextualized and can be influenced by biases and expectations (Tipper, Paul, & Hayes, 2006; Girardi, Lindemann, & Bekkering, 2010; Pellicano, Iani, Borghi, Rubichi, & Nicoletti, 2010; Kalénine, Wamain, Decroix, & Coello, 2016; Wokke, Knot, Fouad, & Ridderinkhof, 2016; Mustile, Giocondo, Caligiore, Borghi, & Kourtis, 2021). However, a synthesis perspective proposes that affordance automaticity should be understood as a dynamic process that changes over time, whereby affordance perception may initially occur automatically but is later modulated by higher-level cognitive processes (Borghi & Riggio, 2015; Kourtis, Vandemaele, & Vingerhoets, 2018; Gastelum, 2020; Djebbara et al, 2022).…”

Context matters during pick-and-place in VR: Impact on search and transport phases

“…Considering the reach phase duration, previous studies have demonstrated motor inhibition when approaching dangerous objects due to the emergence of aversive affordances (Mustile et al, 2021 ). Furthermore, from visual search research, it is known that violations of one's scene grammar lead to longer and more fixations on the critical objects, which is typically attributed to more extended processing of those objects (Henderson et al, 1999 ; Cornelissen and Võ, 2017 ; Draschkow and Võ, 2017 ).…”

“…Furthermore, previous studies demonstrated that reaching an object before grasping it can be affected by various factors. As an example, motor inhibition when approaching dangerous objects has been shown due to the emergence of aversive affordances (Mustile et al, 2021 ). These studies provide evidence that the way we look at and grasp objects around us might differ depending on the meaning of that object and the semantic context they are placed.…”

Emotions Modulate Affordances-Related Motor Responses: A Priming Experiment

“…Gibson (1979) used the term “affordance” earliest to indicate the potential actions elicited by the observation of objects in the environment. The orientation of object graspable parts ( Tucker and Ellis, 1998 ), the object size and graspability ( Anelli et al, 2013a ), the perceived distance of an object ( Mustile et al, 2021 ), or its harmfulness ( Anelli et al, 2012a ) are all aspects influencing affordances.…”