Understanding approach and avoidance in verbal descriptions of everyday actions: An ERP study

Abstract

Understanding verbal descriptions of everyday actions could involve the neural representation of action direction (avoidance and approach) toward persons and things. We recorded the electrophysiological activity of participants while they were reading approach/avoidance action sentences that were directed toward a target: a thing/a person (i.e., "Petra accepted/rejected Ramón in her group"/ "Petra accepted/rejected the receipt of the bank"). We measured brain potentials time locked to the target word. In the case of things, we found a N400-like component with right frontal distribution modulated by approach/avoidance action. This component was more negative in avoidance than in approach sentences. In the case of persons, a later negative event-related potential (545-750 ms) with left frontal distribution was sensitive to verb direction, showing more negative amplitude for approach than avoidance actions. In addition, more negativity in approach-person sentences was associated with fear avoidance trait, whereas less negativity in avoidance-person sentences was associated with a greater approach trait. Our results support that verbal descriptions of approach/avoidance actions are encoded differently depending on whether the target is a thing or a person. Implications of these results for a social, emotional and motivational understanding of action language are discussed.

Negation interacts with motivational direction in understanding action sentences

“…Stimuli. We selected a pool of approach and avoidance sentences from Marrero et al ( [18]; see also [32,31]); verbs were in past tense and third person singular. Approach and avoidance action verbs were varied, for example, reject, exclude, choose, accept, include, .…”

“…Here, we present a study aimed at examining the interaction between negation and motivational direction in sentence comprehension. For this purpose, we reused approach and avoidance sentences of a prior study ( [18], see also [31,32]), and introduced a manipulation of the polarity of the sentence. Firstly, we carried out a study where participants had to judge offline approach or avoidance meaning of sentences both in the affirmative and the negative version (see examples in Table 1).…”

“…Whereas, stimuli evaluated as negative are generally avoided, and hence associated with actions against stimulus-to push it away [16]. Thus, approach and avoidance intentions constitute a semantic frame or category to be encoded for action understanding [17,18].…”

Enhancing Memory for Relationship Actions by Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of the Superior Temporal Sulcus

“…Beyond action observation, language describes how individuals interact with other people by means of social actions that conceptually involve approach “pro stimulus” and avoidance “against stimulus” intentionality [ 21 , 22 ]. For example, “Alejandro accepted/rejected Marta in his group.” Approach and avoidance would constitute a semantic frame or category to be systematically encoded for understanding this type of actions, as representing individual’s intentional direction towards other people has an adaptive role.…”

“…In a previous study [ 21 ], the hypothesis that understanding verbal expressions of others’ social actions would activate self-experienced approach/avoidance brain representations was tested. The electrophysiological activity of participants was recorded, while they were reading approach/avoidance action sentences from a character toward a target—a thing/a person (e.g., “Petra accepted/rejected Ramón in her group”/“Petra accepted/rejected the receipt of the bank”).…”