Abstract
Efficiently perceiving a threatening intention conveyed by others’ bodily actions has great survival value. The current study examined if the human brain is sensitive to differences in intentions that are conveyed via bodily actions. For this purpose, a new intention categorization task was developed in which participants sat in front of a computer screen on which the pictures of highly threatening (HT), moderately threatening (MT), and non-threatening (NT) body actions were presented randomly. Participants were asked to press the corresponding buttons using threatening intention judgment, while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. According to a cluster permutation test, we analyzed N190, N2, EPP (early posterior positivity), and P3. The results showed there was a positive correlation between the amplitude of the EPP induced by three kinds of body actions and the reaction time of the task. The results also revealed that when the deflection of EPP was less positive, the reaction time was shorter. We suggest that EPP might be useful as an index of body intention processing of the brain. The current study revealed that intention perception of body actions modulates brain processing.
Highlights
The issue of threat detection was vital in many situations during human phylogenesis to allocate attention to threats to facilitate adequate reactions in due time (Feldmann-Wüstefeld et al, 2011)
The mean accuracy of three conditions was 96% (HT), 93% (MT), and 93% (NT), respectively
The results showed a main effect of threatening intention, F(2,52) = 17.123, p = 0.002, η2p = 0.233, with significant faster reaction times following highly threatening (HT) (M = 461 ms, standard deviation (SD) = 33 ms) as compared with moderately threatening (MT) (M = 496 ms, SD = 26 ms, p < 0.001) and NT (M = 477 ms, SD = 37 ms, p = 0.003)
Summary
The issue of threat detection was vital in many situations during human phylogenesis to allocate attention to threats to facilitate adequate reactions in due time (Feldmann-Wüstefeld et al, 2011). Threats are usually thoroughly processed (Williams et al, 2006), and they prepare the body for greater action tendency (Schutter et al, 2008; van Loon et al, 2010; Borgomaneri et al, 2014) and for quick actions (Coombes et al, 2005; Blanchard et al, 2011) This phenomenon has been shown to occur in response to threat-related words (Fox et al, 2001), pictures (Yiend and Mathews, 2001), faces, or movements (Fox et al, 2001, 2002; Borhani et al, 2015; de Valk et al, 2015). Extensive studies on the processing of body movements showed that anger or fear body movements yielded automatic defense responses, such as fight, flight, and freeze (Tamietto and De Gelder, 2010; Pichon et al, 2012; de Gelder, 2013; Kveraga et al, 2015).
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