Emotions are organized around 2 basic motivational systems, appetitive and defensive, that evolved from primitive neural circuits in the mammalian brain. The appetitive system is keyed for approach behavior, founded on the preservative, sexual, and nurturant reflexes that underlie pleasant affects; the defense system is keyed for withdrawal, founded on protective and escape reflexes that underlie unpleasant affects. Both systems control attentional processing: Distal engagement by motive-relevant cues prompts immobility and orienting. With greater cue proximity (e.g., predator or prey imminence), neural motor centers supercede, determining overt defensive or consummatory action. In humans, these systems determine affective expression, evaluation behavior, and physiological responses that can be related to specific functional changes in the brain. This theoretical approach is illustrated with psychophysiological and brain imagery studies in which human subjects respond to emotional picture stimuli.
Search Results
You are looking at 1 - 4 of 4 items for
- Author: Péter Lang x
- Refine by Access: All Content x
Emotion and Motivation: Attention, Perception, and Action
Peter J. Lang
Operative Elbow Injuries Among Hungarian Elite Wrestlers
Szabolcs Lajos Molnár, Péter Hidas, György Kocsis, Gábor Rögler, Péter Balogh, Miklós Farkasházi, and Péter Lang
Background:
Upper extremity injuries are common in wrestling, most of which do not require surgery.
Methods:
We retrospectively documented the case histories of six elite wrestlers who sustained elbow injuries that required surgical treatment, three of which involved reinjury and another surgical procedure.
Results:
All but one of the six initial injuries were associated with a defensive maneuver. Reinjury was more common for freestyle wrestling than for Greco-Roman style. The average time between the initial elbow injury and surgical intervention was 22 months. One-half of the wrestlers with elbow injuries that required surgery were reinjured and underwent revision surgery.
Conclusions:
All of the elite wrestlers waited for a long period of time before receiving surgery for the initial injury, and the reinjury rate was high.
Motivated Engagement to Appetitive and Aversive Fanship Cues: Psychophysiological Responses of Rival Sport Fans
Charles H. Hillman, Bruce N. Cuthbert, Margaret M. Bradley, and Peter J. Lang
Psychophysiological responses of two rival sport fan groups were assessed within the context of Lang’s biphasic theory of emotion. Twenty-four participants, placed in two groups based on their identification with local sport teams, viewed 6 pictures from 6 categories: team-relevant pleasant sport, team-irrelevant sport, team-relevant unpleasant sport, erotica, household objects, and mutilation. Fans rated appetitive sport pictures higher in pleasure and arousal compared to aversive sport pictures. Physiological measures (startle probe-P3, the startle eye-blink reflex, slow cortical potentials to picture onset, and skin conductance) differentiated both appetitive and aversive team-relevant categories from team-irrelevant pictures, and increased orbicularis oculi EMG was found only for team-relevant appetitive pictures. These results suggest there are differences between rival sport fans in response to the same pictorial stimuli, and further suggest that fans provide an ideal population in which to measure motivation toward appetitive stimuli.
Associations Between Household Socioeconomic Status, Car Ownership, Physical Activity, and Cardiorespiratory Fitness in South African Primary Schoolchildren Living in Marginalized Communities
Markus Gerber, Christin Lang, Johanna Beckmann, Jan Degen, Rosa du Randt, Stefanie Gall, Kurt Z. Long, Ivan Müller, Madeleine Nienaber, Peter Steinmann, Uwe Pühse, Jürg Utzinger, Siphesihle Nqweniso, and Cheryl Walter
Background: Little is known whether physical activity (PA)-promoting environments are equally accessible to children with divergent socioeconomic status (SES) in low-/middle-income countries. The authors, therefore, examined whether South African children from poorer versus wealthier families living in marginalized communities differed in moderate to vigorous PA and cardiorespiratory fitness. We also tested associations between family car ownership and PA/cardiorespiratory fitness. Methods: Parents/guardians of 908 children (49% girls, mean age = 8.3 [1.4] y) completed a survey on household SES. PA was assessed via 7-day accelerometry, parental and child self-reports, and cardiorespiratory fitness with the 20-m shuttle run test. Results: Based on accelerometry, most children met current moderate to vigorous PA recommendations (≥60 min/d). About 73% of the children did not engage in structured physical education lessons. Whereas children of the lowest SES quintile accumulated higher levels of device-based moderate to vigorous PA, peers from the highest SES quintile engaged in more sedentary behaviors, but self-reported higher engagement in sports, dance, and moving games after school. Families’ car ownership was associated with higher parent/self-reported leisure-time PA. Conclusions: A deeper understanding is needed about why wealthier children are more sedentary, but simultaneously engage in more leisure-time PA. The fact that access to structural physical education is denied to most children is critical and needs to be addressed.
