Motor actions in retrieval of valenced information: II. Boundary conditions for motor congruence effects

We report an experiment on the influence of arm positions on the generation of valenced information. Participants were induced to perform either approach (arm flexion) or avoidance (arm extension) behavior while generating names of persons. One half of the participants had to indicate whether they had positive, negative or neutral attitudes towards these persons during retrieval (evaluation group), the other half had to indicate their attitudes after retrieval (nonevaluation group). Participants retrieved significantly more negative than positive names under arm extension but more positive than negative names under arm flexion. This motor congruence effect, however, was only obtained for the evaluation group. The data show that an evaluative context is necessary to produce the effect in retrieval.