Botta Alessandro, Lagravinese Giovanna, Bove Marco, Avenanti Alessio, Avanzino Laura
Department of Experimental Medicine (DIMES), Section of Human Physiology, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy.
Department of Neuroscience, Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology, Genetics and Maternal Child Health (DINOGMI), University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2021 Feb 25;12:616995. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.616995. eCollection 2021.
The investigation of how humans perceive and respond to emotional signals conveyed by the human body has been for a long time secondary compared with the investigation of facial expressions and emotional scenes recognition. The aims of this behavioral study were to assess the ability to process emotional body postures and to test whether motor response is mainly driven by the emotional content of the picture or if it is influenced by motor resonance. Emotional body postures and scenes (IAPS) divided into three clusters (fear, happiness, and neutral) were shown to 25 healthy subjects (13 males, mean age ± SD: 22.3 ± 1.8 years) in a three-alternative forced choice task. Subjects were asked to recognize the emotional content of the pictures by pressing one of three keys as fast as possible in order to estimate response times (RTs). The rating of valence and arousal was also performed. We found shorter RTs for fearful body postures as compared with happy and neutral postures. In contrast, no differences across emotional categories were found for the IAPS stimuli. Analysis on valence and arousal and the subsequent item analysis showed an excellent reliability of the two sets of images used in the experiment. Our results show that fearful body postures are rapidly recognized and processed, probably thanks to the automatic activation of a series of central nervous system structures orchestrating the defensive threat reactions, strengthening and supporting previous neurophysiological and behavioral findings in body language processing.
与对面部表情和情感场景识别的研究相比，长期以来，关于人类如何感知和回应人体传达的情感信号的研究一直处于次要地位。这项行为研究的目的是评估处理情感身体姿势的能力，并测试运动反应主要是由图片的情感内容驱动，还是受运动共鸣的影响。将分为三个类别（恐惧、快乐和中性）的情感身体姿势和场景（国际情感图片系统）在一个三选一的强制选择任务中展示给25名健康受试者（13名男性，平均年龄±标准差：22.3±1.8岁）。受试者被要求通过尽快按下三个键之一来识别图片的情感内容，以便估计反应时间（RTs）。还进行了效价和唤醒度评分。我们发现，与快乐和中性姿势相比，恐惧身体姿势的反应时间更短。相比之下，国际情感图片系统刺激在不同情感类别之间未发现差异。对效价和唤醒度的分析以及随后的项目分析表明，实验中使用的两组图像具有出色的可靠性。我们的结果表明，恐惧身体姿势能够被快速识别和处理，这可能得益于一系列协调防御性威胁反应的中枢神经系统结构的自动激活，强化并支持了先前在肢体语言处理方面的神经生理学和行为学发现。
