Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.
Exp Brain Res. 2020 Apr;238(4):843-849. doi: 10.1007/s00221-020-05754-6. Epub 2020 Mar 4.
Emotional state, in particular anxiety, has been shown to constrain perceptual judgement of action capabilities. However, whether anxiety also constrains actual behaviour is unknown. The current study, therefore, aimed to determine whether state anxiety constrained firstly perceptual judgements of action capabilities and secondly actual behaviour. To do this, we asked participants to make perceptual judgements and perform action behaviours in relation to crossing ground-based apertures representing puddles. State anxiety was measured in 30 participants using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The critical ratio of aperture size relative to leg length at which participants' behaviour choice would switch between a step and a spring was calculated. In a perceptual judgement task, participants judged the ratio at which they would choose to switch. In a subsequent executed action task, the ratio at which they actually switched was measured. Perceptual critical ratio could be predicted via state anxiety and age, while action critical ratio was not predicted by either. Therefore, this study has demonstrated that state anxiety and age both constrain perceptual judgement of action capabilities, as shown in previous studies. However, this does not seem to result in a change in emergent behaviour. This highlights the importance of measuring emergent behaviour rather than inferring it from perceptual judgements even when they are couched in terms of action.
情绪状态，特别是焦虑，已被证明会限制对动作能力的感知判断。然而，焦虑是否也限制了实际行为尚不清楚。因此，本研究旨在确定状态焦虑是否首先限制了对动作能力的感知判断，其次限制了实际行为。为此，我们要求参与者根据代表水坑的地面开口做出感知判断和动作行为。通过状态-特质焦虑量表（State-Trait Anxiety Inventory）在 30 名参与者中测量了状态焦虑。计算了参与者的行为选择从跨步到跳跃的转换点的开口尺寸与腿长的临界比值。在感知判断任务中，参与者判断他们选择转换的比例。在随后的执行动作任务中，测量了他们实际转换的比例。感知临界比可以通过状态焦虑和年龄来预测，而行为临界比则不能通过任何一个来预测。因此，本研究表明，状态焦虑和年龄都会限制对动作能力的感知判断，这与之前的研究一致。然而，这似乎并没有导致出现行为的变化。这强调了即使在以行动为背景的情况下，测量出现行为而不是从感知判断中推断行为的重要性。
