Negative emotional state slows down movement speed: behavioral and neural evidence

Athletic performance is affected by emotional state. Athletes may underperform in competition due to poor emotion regulation. Movement speed plays an important role in many competition events. Flexible control of movement speed is critical for effective athletic performance. Although behavioral evidence showed that negative emotion can influence movement speed, the nature of the relationship remains controversial. Thus, the present study investigated how negative emotion affects movement speed and the neural mechanism underlying the interaction between emotion processing and movement control.

The present study combined electroencephalography (EEG) technology with a cued-action task to investigate the effect of negative emotion on movement speed. In total, 21 undergraduate students were recruited for this study. Participants were asked to perform six consecutive action tasks after viewing an emotional picture. Pictures were presented in two blocks (one negative and one neutral). After the participants completed a set of tasks (neutral of negative), they were subjected to complete a 9-point self-assessment manikin scale. Participants underwent EEG while performing the tasks.

At the behavior level, there was a significant main effect of emotional valence on movement speed, with participants exhibiting significantly slower movements in the negative emotional condition than in the neutral condition. EEG data showed increased theta oscillation and larger P1 amplitude in response to negative than to neural images suggesting that more cognitive resources were required to process negative than neutral images. EEG data also showed a larger late CNV area in the neutral condition than in the negative condition, which suggested that there was a significant decrease in brain activation during action tasks in negative emotional condition than in the neural. While the early CNV did not reveal a significant main effect of emotional valence.

The present results indicate that a negative emotion can slow movement, which is largely due to negative emotional processing consuming more resources than non-emotional processing and this interference effect mainly occurred in the late movement preparation phase.