Embodiment of approach-avoidance behavior: Motivational priming of whole-body movements in a virtual world.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas B. Eder ◽  
Anand Krishna ◽  
Albrecht Sebald ◽  
Wilfried Kunde
Keyword(s):  
Avoidance Behavior ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Approach Avoidance

scholarly journals Preprint: Embodiment of approach-avoidance behavior

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas B Eder ◽  
Anand Krishna ◽  
Albrecht Sebald ◽  
Wilfried Kunde
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Avoidance Behavior ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Avoidance Motivation ◽  
Aversive Stimuli ◽  
Approach Avoidance

Previous studies showed that humans can flexibly reconfigure manual reactions to motivational stimuli in order to produce compatible changes in visual environments (i.e., approach appetitive and avoid aversive stimuli). Using a virtual reality headset, we examined whether analogous flexibility is observed with whole-body movements in forward and backward directions that produced (non-)corresponding visual movements in a virtual environment. Two experiments showed that forward movements were initiated faster in response to a (pleasant) flower and backward movements in response to an (unpleasant) spider, even when the movements resulted in reverse visual motions towards the spider and away from the flower. In contrast, visual motions were more important when these motions were controlled manually and after strategic preparation of producing body steps. Overall, results suggest that there is a highly overlearned connection between locomotion and approach/avoidance that is difficult to override. Implications in regard to the embodiment of approach-avoidance motivation are discussed.

Both distance change and movement goal affect whole-body approach-avoidance behavior.

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-172
Author(s):  
Daniëlle Bouman ◽  
John F. Stins ◽  
Peter J. Beek
Keyword(s):  
Avoidance Behavior ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Approach Avoidance ◽  
Distance Change

scholarly journals Validation of New Methods of Using Simulated Whole-Body Movements as Implicit Indicators of Sound and Odor Preferences

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donato Cereghetti ◽  
Pauline Faye ◽  
Laetitia Gros ◽  
Lucas Mahé ◽  
Emmanuelle Diaz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Stimulus ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Hedonic Value ◽  
Visual Approach ◽  
Approach Avoidance ◽  
Odor Preferences ◽  
Positive Stimuli ◽  
Avoidance Reactions

Would you get close to a stinky perfume bottle or to a loudspeaker producing noise? In this paper, we present two procedures that allowed us to assess the ability of auditory and olfactory cues to elicit automatic approach/avoidance reactions toward their sources. The procedures resulted from an adaptation of the Visual Approach/Avoidance by the Self Task (VAAST; Rougier et al., 2018), a task having the peculiarity of simulating approach/avoidance reactions by using visual feedback coming from the whole-body movements. In the auditory VAAST (Experiment 1), participants were instructed to move forward or backward from a loudspeaker that produced spoken words differentiated by their level of distortion and thus by their hedonic value. In the olfactory VAAST (Experiment 2), participants were asked to move forward or backward from a perfume bottle that delivered pleasant and unpleasant odors. We expected, consistent with the approach/avoidance compatibility effect, shorter latencies for approaching positive stimuli and avoiding negative stimuli. In both experiments, we found an effect of the quality of the emotional stimulus on forward actions of participants, with undistorted words and pleasant odors inducing faster forward movements compared with that for distorted words and unpleasant odors. Notably, our results further suggest that the VAAST can successfully be used with implicit instructions, i.e., without requiring participants to explicitly process the valence of the emotional stimulus (in Experiment 1) or even the emotional stimulus itself (in Experiment 2). The sensitivity of our procedures is analyzed and its potential in cross-modal and (contextualized) consumer research discussed.

scholarly journals Assessing Automatic Approach-Avoidance Behavior in an Immersive Virtual Environment

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliane Degner ◽  
Lea Steep ◽  
Susanne Schmidt ◽  
Frank Steinicke
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Avoidance Behavior ◽  
Body Movement ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Approach And Avoidance ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
Immersive Virtual Environment ◽  
Behavioral Tendencies ◽  
Approach Avoidance ◽  
And Behavior

The use of virtual reality (VR) promises enormous potential for studying human behavior. While approach and avoidance tendencies have been explored in various areas of basic and applied psychology, such as attitude and emotion research, basic learning psychology, and behavior therapy, they have rarely been studied in VR. One major focus of this research is to understand the psychological mechanisms underlying automatic behavioral tendencies towards and away from positively or negatively evaluated stimuli. We implemented a whole-body movement stimulus-response compatibility task to explore approach-avoidance behavior in an immersive virtual environment. We chose attitudinal stimuli—spiders and butterflies—on which people widely agree in their general evaluations (in that people evaluate spiders negatively and butterflies positively), while there is still substantial inter-individual variance (i. e., the intensity in which people dislike spiders or like butterflies). We implemented two parallel approach-avoidance tasks, one in VR, one desktop-based. Both tasks revealed the expected compatibility effects that were positively intercorrelated. Interestingly, however, the compatibility effect in the VR measure was unrelated to participants’ self-reported fear of spiders and stimulus evaluations. These results raise important implications about the usage of VR to study automatic behavioral tendencies.

scholarly journals The effects of cortisol administration on approach–avoidance behavior: An event-related potential study

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacobien M. van Peer ◽  
Karin Roelofs ◽  
Mark Rotteveel ◽  
J. Gert van Dijk ◽  
Philip Spinhoven ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Avoidance Behavior ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Potential Study ◽  
Approach Avoidance

scholarly journals Blunted emotion judgments of body movements in Parkinson’s disease

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuelle Bellot ◽  
Antoine Garnier-Crussard ◽  
Elodie Pongan ◽  
Floriane Delphin-Combe ◽  
Marie-Hélène Coste ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Parkinson’S Disease ◽  
Parkinson's Disease ◽  
Mirror Neuron System ◽  
Mirror Neuron ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Emotional Facial Expressions ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Point Light

AbstractSome of the behavioral disorders observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD) may be related to an altered processing of social messages, including emotional expressions. Emotions conveyed by whole body movements may be difficult to generate and be detected by PD patients. The aim of the present study was to compare valence judgments of emotional whole body expressions in individuals with PD and in healthy controls matched for age, gender and education. Twenty-eight participants (13 PD patients and 15 healthy matched control participants) were asked to rate the emotional valence of short movies depicting emotional interactions between two human characters presented with the “Point Light Displays” technique. To ensure understanding of the perceived scene, participants were asked to briefly describe each of the evaluated movies. Patients’ emotional valence evaluations were less intense than those of controls for both positive (p < 0.001) and negative (p < 0.001) emotional expressions, even though patients were able to correctly describe the depicted scene. Our results extend the previously observed impaired processing of emotional facial expressions to impaired processing of emotions expressed by body language. This study may support the hypothesis that PD affects the embodied simulation of emotional expression and the potentially involved mirror neuron system.

scholarly journals Fronto-striatal projections regulate approach-avoidance conflict

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne C. Loewke ◽  
Adelaide R. Minerva ◽  
Alexandra B. Nelson ◽  
Anatol C. Kreitzer ◽  
Lisa A. Gunaydin
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Avoidance Behavior ◽  
D1 Receptor ◽  
Projection Neurons ◽  
Medium Spiny Neurons ◽  
Neural Pathways ◽  
Spiny Neurons ◽  
Striatal Projection Neurons ◽  
Neural Computations ◽  
Approach Avoidance

ABSTRACTThe dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) has been linked to approach-avoidance behavior and decision-making under conflict, key neural computations thought to be altered in anxiety disorders. However, the heterogeneity of efferent prefrontal projections has obscured identification of the specific top-down neural pathways regulating these anxiety-related behaviors. While the dmPFC-amygdala circuit has long been implicated in controlling reflexive fear responses, recent work suggests that this circuit is less important for avoidance behavior. We hypothesized that dmPFC neurons projecting to the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) represent a subset of prefrontal neurons that robustly encode and drive approach-avoidance behavior. Using fiber photometry recording during the elevated zero maze (EZM) task, we show heightened neural activity in prefrontal and fronto-striatal projection neurons, but not fronto-amydalar projection neurons, during exploration of the anxiogenic open arms of the maze. Additionally, through pathway-specific optogenetics we demonstrate that this fronto-striatal projection preferentially excites postsynaptic D1 receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons in the DMS and bidirectionally controls avoidance behavior. We conclude that this striatal-projecting subpopulation of prefrontal neurons regulates approach-avoidance conflict, supporting a model for prefrontal control of defensive behavior in which the dmPFC-amygdala projection controls reflexive fear behavior and the dmPFC-striatum projection controls anxious avoidance behavior. Our findings identify this fronto-striatal circuit as a valuable therapeutic target for developing interventions to alleviate excessive avoidance behavior in anxiety disorders.

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