title: 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.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Social y Organizacional. Sección de Psicología y Logopedia. Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de La Laguna, Campus de Guajara s/n, 38071, La Laguna, S/C de Tenerife, Spain. hmarrero@ull.es.
authors.forename: Hipólito
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Marrero
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Educación, Universidad of Concepción, Victor Lamas, 1290, Concepción, Región del Bio Bio, Chile.
authors.forename: Mabel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Urrutia
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Social y Organizacional. Sección de Psicología y Logopedia. Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de La Laguna, Campus de Guajara s/n, 38071, La Laguna, S/C de Tenerife, Spain.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Beltrán
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Social y Organizacional. Sección de Psicología y Logopedia. Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de La Laguna, Campus de Guajara s/n, 38071, La Laguna, S/C de Tenerife, Spain.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gámez
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Social y Organizacional. Sección de Psicología y Logopedia. Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de La Laguna, Campus de Guajara s/n, 38071, La Laguna, S/C de Tenerife, Spain.
authors.forename: José M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Díaz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Action understanding; Approach/avoidance; Frontal negativity; Language; N400