Negative emotional state slows down movement speed: behavioral and neural evidence
Athletic performance is affected by emotional state. Athletes may underperform in competition due to poor emotion regulation. Movement speed plays an important role in many competition events. Flexible control of movement speed is critical for effective athletic performance. Although behavioral evidence showed that negative emotion can influence movement speed, the nature of the relationship remains controversial. Thus, the present study investigated how negative emotion affects movement speed and the neural mechanism underlying the interaction between emotion processing and movement control.
The present study combined electroencephalography (EEG) technology with a cued-action task to investigate the effect of negative emotion on movement speed. In total, 21 undergraduate students were recruited for this study. Participants were asked to perform six consecutive action tasks after viewing an emotional picture. Pictures were presented in two blocks (one negative and one neutral). After the participants completed a set of tasks (neutral of negative), they were subjected to complete a 9-point self-assessment manikin scale. Participants underwent EEG while performing the tasks.
At the behavior level, there was a significant main effect of emotional valence on movement speed, with participants exhibiting significantly slower movements in the negative emotional condition than in the neutral condition. EEG data showed increased theta oscillation and larger P1 amplitude in response to negative than to neural images suggesting that more cognitive resources were required to process negative than neutral images. EEG data also showed a larger late CNV area in the neutral condition than in the negative condition, which suggested that there was a significant decrease in brain activation during action tasks in negative emotional condition than in the neural. While the early CNV did not reveal a significant main effect of emotional valence.
The present results indicate that a negative emotion can slow movement, which is largely due to negative emotional processing consuming more resources than non-emotional processing and this interference effect mainly occurred in the late movement preparation phase.
The experiment employed a 2 × 2 within-subject design with emotional valence (negative vs. neutral) and action task sequence (1st and 6th action) as the factors. In the cued-action task, participants were prompted to perform six consecutive action tasks after viewing an emotional picture. Each emotional valence condition consisted of 150 pictures. The task data were compiled by E-Prime 2.0 software.
Behavioral data of action time were recorded by E-Prime 2.0, including the time spent on the first and the sixth action tasks (the total time it took to release key 2, press 5, release 5, and press 2 again). Data falling beyond three standard deviations of the mean were excluded. Statistical analysis of action time was performed in SPSS 22.0. Data were analyzed by two-way repeated measures analyses of variance (rmANOVAs) with emotional valence (negative and neutral) and action task sequence (1st and 6th action). In order to improve the estimates of the effect, we also conducted a two-way rmANOVAs with emotional valence (negative and neutral) and action task sequence (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th action).
The scores of the 9-point emotional self-assessment were analyzed by the paired t-test with emotional valence (negative and neutral).
EEG measures electrical brain responses directly and with high temporal resolution. EEG was conducted with 64 Ag-AgCl electrodes arranged according to the international 10–20 system with a sampling frequency of 1,000 Hz (Brain Products GmbH, Gilching, Germany). The EEG was recorded referentially against the FCz, and AFz served as the ground electrode. The vertical electrooculogram was recorded infra-orbitally at the left eye and the horizontal electrooculogram was recorded latera-orbitally of the right eye. All electrooculogram and electroencephalogram electrodes impedances were maintained below 5 kΩ.
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