Imitation of Touching Dangerous Animals Triggers Motor Inhibition in a Primed Target Grasping-Categorization Task

Abstract

The present study adopted a primed target grasping-categorization task and selected pictures of animals as target stimuli to investigate whether motor inhibition influences the motor interference effect of dangerous animals. The results identified more positive P2 and P3 amplitudes accompanied by larger delta event-related synchronization in the dangerous condition than in the neutral condition, suggesting that compared to neutral animal targets, dangerous animal targets attracted increased attentional resources in early processing and that subjects recruited more cognitive resources to process dangerous animal targets than neutral animal targets. Moreover, the results identified larger theta event-related synchronization (reflecting motor inhibition) in the dangerous condition than in the neutral condition. Thus, the results suggested that prepared motor responses were inhibited to avoid touching dangerous animal targets in the current task, supporting that motor inhibition influences the motor interference effect of dangerous animals based on a primed target grasping-categorization task.

Keywords:

• motor interference effect
• dangerous animal
• motor inhibition
• theta-band oscillations
• time-frequency analysis

DATA AVAILABILITY

Raw data, including behavioral data and EEG data, are available online at https://www.scidb.cn/s/ZvEnUz.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant number 72271197 and the General Projects for Humanities and Social Science Research of the Ministry of Education under grant number 21XJA190003.