Cao Rong, Cao Gai, Liu Peng
School of Public Management, Northwest University, Xi'an, China.
The Research Center for Livelihood Security and Social Governance in Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, China.
Front Psychol. 2020 Mar 27;11:580. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00580. eCollection 2020.
Existing research has indicated that dangerous objects may conflict with an individual's prepared motor actions and thus slow responses. This phenomenon is called the motor interference effect from dangerous objects. However, its origin remains arguable. The current study aimed to preclude an alternative origin and to investigate whether the efficiency of processing a prepared response toward a dangerous object could benefit from increasing the perceptual salience of the object by painting the object red. The design used a shape categorization task to emphasize the dangerous elements of target objects and manipulated target color (gray versus red), target dangerousness (safe versus dangerous) and prime-target congruency (congruent versus incongruent). The null effect of N2 amplitudes between the dangerous and safe conditions precluded the alternative origin and suggested that the motor interference effect did not originate from response inhibition. Furthermore, the results indicated a modulation effect of the motor interference effect in different colors. The classic motor interference effect was observed in the gray target condition, but it diminished in the red target condition. The underlying cognitive processes were reflected in ERPs. More positive P2 and frontal P3 amplitudes were identified in the red target condition than in the gray target condition, which indicated that deeper feature detection was assigned to and more attentional resources were automatically recruited for the red targets than for the gray targets. Analysis of the parietal P3 amplitudes identified a similar result pattern as the mean RTs. A more positive P3 amplitude was identified in the dangerous condition than in the safe condition when the targets were painted gray. In contrast, the P3 amplitudes were identical between the dangerous condition and the safe condition when the targets were painted red. The results indicated that the increased attentional resources facilitated the evaluation of red target dangerousness and thus accelerated reactions to the red dangerous targets; the reaction speeds to those targets were close to those for the reaction speeds to the red safe targets. Detailed processes that underline these components are discussed.
现有研究表明，危险物体可能与个体准备好的运动动作产生冲突，从而减慢反应速度。这种现象被称为来自危险物体的运动干扰效应。然而，其起源仍存在争议。当前的研究旨在排除另一种起源，并调查通过将危险物体涂成红色来提高其感知显著性是否能提高对危险物体准备反应的处理效率。该设计使用形状分类任务来强调目标物体的危险元素，并操纵目标颜色（灰色与红色）、目标危险性（安全与危险）以及启动刺激 - 目标一致性（一致与不一致）。危险和安全条件下N2波幅的零效应排除了另一种起源，并表明运动干扰效应并非源于反应抑制。此外，结果表明运动干扰效应在不同颜色下存在调节作用。在灰色目标条件下观察到了经典的运动干扰效应，但在红色目标条件下该效应减弱。潜在的认知过程通过事件相关电位（ERP）得以体现。与灰色目标条件相比，红色目标条件下识别出更正向的P2波幅和额部P3波幅，这表明相较于灰色目标，红色目标被赋予了更深入的特征检测，并且自动招募了更多的注意力资源。顶叶P3波幅的分析得出了与平均反应时相似的结果模式。当目标被涂成灰色时，危险条件下的P3波幅比安全条件下更正向。相比之下，当目标被涂成红色时，危险条件和安全条件下的P3波幅相同。结果表明，增加的注意力资源促进了对红色目标危险性的评估，从而加快了对红色危险目标的反应速度；对这些目标的反应速度接近对红色安全目标的反应速度。文中讨论了这些成分背后的详细过程。
