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Sensorimotor fluency influences affect: Evidence from electromyography

Peter R. Cannonab; Amy E. Hayesc; Steven P. Tipperc
a
Bangor University, Bangor b University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK c Bangor University, Bangor, UK

First published on: 12 June 2009

To cite this Article Cannon, Peter R. , Hayes, Amy E. and Tipper, Steven P.(2010) 'Sensorimotor fluency influences affect:
Evidence from electromyography', Cognition & Emotion, 24: 4, 681 — 691, First published on: 12 June 2009 (iFirst)
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02699930902927698
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699930902927698

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 COGNITION AND EMOTION
2010, 24 (4), 681
691

BRIEF REPORT

Sensorimotor fluency influences affect:

Evidence from electromyography

Peter R. Cannon
Bangor University, Bangor, and University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK
Downloaded By: [Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile] At: 14:30 1 October 2010

Amy E. Hayes and Steven P. Tipper

Bangor University, Bangor, UK

Fluency of visual processing induces affective responses, with easier-to-process stimuli being
preferred (Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). The present study extends this research to the motor
domain by investigating the effect of sensorimotor fluency on affective reactions to objects in a
categorisation task. In fluent stimulus
response (s
r) trials, grasp-compatible objects were presented
on the same side of the screen as the response hand; in non-fluent trials, grasp incompatible objects
were presented on the opposite side of the screen to the response hand. Affective responses were
measured implicitly using face muscle activity (electromyography). As predicted, participants
exhibited greater cheek muscle activity (associated with smiling) in trials with s
r compatible
responses compared with incompatible responses. These findings support hedonic models of fluency
in which fluent processing elicits direct emotional experience, and suggest that models of hedonic
fluency should take into account the integration of the motor system in visual processing.

Keywords: Emotion; Action; Electromyography; EMG; Stimulus
response compatibility.

Within psychology there has been a history of
investigating the relationship between perceptual
processing and the emotional evaluation of
objects. For example, in the mere exposure effect
(Zajonc, 1968), increased frequency of exposure to
objects produces more positive evaluations of
targets. One explanation for this effect is based
on fluency of perceptual processing: repeated
exposures facilitate stimulus processing, and this
increased perceptual fluency results in a more
positive affective rating of the target (Bornstein &
D’Agostino, 1994). That is, it has been proposed

Correspondence should be addressed to: Peter Cannon, School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth PL4 8AA,
UK. E-mail: peter.cannon@univ.bangor.ac.uk
This research was supported by Economic and Social Research Council grant RES-000-23-0429 awarded to SPT and AEH.
This study was designed and data were collected at Bangor University. The manuscript was written at Bangor University and
the Universtiy of Plymouth. Peter Cannon is now at the University of Cambridge.
We thank Mike Tucker, Piotr Winkielman, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on this manuscript.

# 2009 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business 681
http://www.psypress.com/cogemotion DOI:10.1080/02699930902927698
 CANNON, HAYES, TIPPER
that our emotion systems are sensitive to the
dynamics of cognitive processes, and that factors
that result in faster and more efficient processing
will increase positive affective responses. Support-
ing this theory, other manipulations that facilitate
object perception besides prior exposure have been
shown to influence affective responses. For ex-
ample, subliminal priming, high figure
ground
contrast, and longer viewing time have all been
demonstrated to increase positive affective ratings
(Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998).
Research investigating the relationship be-
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tween processing fluency and affect has primarily
focused on the fluency of perceptual processes.
However, the visual system is highly integrated
with other neural systems, including the motor
system. Evidence for the integration between
vision and action has been demonstrated in
studies of patient behaviour (e.g., Goodale,
Milner, Jakobson, & Carey, 1991; Humphreys,
Riddoch, Forti, & Ackroyd, 2004); additional
evidence is provided by experiments that manip-
ulate task-irrelevant features of stimuli, such as
the Simon effect (Simon & Small, 1969), or object
affordances (Tucker & Ellis, 1998). Owing to
the reciprocal relationship between vision and
action, it is logical to assume that the fluency of
perceptual processing can be more broadly con-
strued as the fluency of the sensorimotor system.
If this is true, then varying sensorimotor fluency
by manipulating the ease of response toward
objects should also influence affective responses
to these same objects.
In the Simon effect, responses to stimuli
are faster and more accurate if the stimulus and
required response are spatially compatible
and slower and less accurate when the stimulus
and response are spatially incompatible (Hommel,
1995; Simon & Small, 1969). This is the case
even when the spatial location of the stimulus is
irrelevant to task demands. For example, when
reporting the colour of a stimulus with left and
right key presses, responses are faster when
responding with the right hand if the stimulus is
presented on the right side (near the responding
hand). In the object affordance effect it is the
conflict between the grasp-compatible features of
682 COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2010, 24 (4)
the stimulus and the required response that leads
to the stimulus
response (s
r) conflict, with faster
reaction times and more accurate responses when
the grasp-compatible features of the stimulus
match the required response (e.g., Symes, Ellis,
& Tucker, 2005). For example, Tucker and Ellis
(1998) demonstrated that when judging whether a
range of graspable objects (e.g., a frying pan) were
inverted or not, responses were faster and more
accurate if the handles of the pans were oriented
toward the response hand. As with the Simon
effect, the grasp affordances appear to be auto-
matically computed, in the sense that they are not
relevant to the participant’s main task goals.
These s
r compatibility procedures were com-
bined in the present study so that participants
responded to objects under two different condi-
tions. The first was the s
r compatible response
condition in which the stimulus object was
presented on the same side of the screen as the
response key and the object’s handle was oriented
towards the response hand. The second condition
was the s
r incompatible response condition, in
which the stimulus object was presented on the
opposite side of the screen to the response key and
the object’s handle was oriented away from the
response hand. As with previous Simon effect and
object affordance experiments, the s
r compatible
condition was predicted to facilitate responses
compared to the s
r incompatible condition,
resulting in faster and more accurate responses.
Participants’ affective responses were measured
using two techniques: an explicit measure and an
implicit measure. Explicit affective ratings were
only collected in the final block of trials at the end
of the experiment using a liking scale (see Bayliss,
Paul, Cannon, & Tipper, 2006, for a similar
procedure). Affective responses were measured
implicitly by recording facial muscle activity using
electromyography (EMG) during the speeded
response task. This technique measures the elec-
trical activity relating to muscle tension and can be
used to assess the expressions of emotion, with
higher electrical activity being related to greater
muscle activity. As with previous electromyo-
graphic investigations of fluency, the activity of
the zygomaticus major cheek muscle, associated

with positive emotions (smiling), and the corru-
gator supercilii brow muscle, associated with
negative emotions (frowning), was recorded.
It was predicted that sensorimotor fluency
would result in a similar pattern of muscle
activity to studies that investigated fast effortless
perceptual processing (Harmon-Jones & Allen,
2001; Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001; Winkielman,
Halberstadt, Fazendeiro, & Catty, 2006). These
authors found that perceptual fluency influenced
zygomaticus muscle activity but did not influence
corrugator muscle activity. They interpreted this
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result as supporting the common view that
positive and negative affect are subserved by
separable systems, and, moreover, as indicating
that perceptual fluency selectively acts on the
positive affect system. In contrast, Topolinski,
Likowski, Weyers, and Strack (2009) found
effects in both zygomaticus and corrugator
muscles in more complex tasks examining se-
mantic associations between word triads. It was
assumed that the sensorimotor processes in the
present task were more similar to the simple
perceptual tasks of Winkielman and Cacioppo
(2001). If this proved to be true, then s
r
compatibility would selectively increase zygoma-
ticus activity in the absence of an effect for
corrugator activity.
This is the first study to test whether
sensorimotor fluency evokes positive affect mea-
sured implicitly using EMG. Importantly, muscle
activity was recorded in the earlier blocks of the
experiment before the explicit liking rating task
was introduced. In this way, any EMG effects
associated with sensorimotor fluency reflected
affective reactions actually experienced during
the execution of the responses. This avoided
the alternative possibility that arises when sub-
jects give explicit liking ratings to the stimuli,
namely that EMG effects might be a conse-
quence of making the explicit affective judge-
ment, which could produce an apparent effect of
fluency simply owing to task demands rather
than to any experienced affective responses to
fluency.
SENSORIMOTOR FLUENCY INFLUENCES AFFECT
METHOD
Participants
Twenty-four female undergraduate students from
Bangor University volunteered to take part in the
experiment and received course credit for their
participation. All participants gave informed con-
sent and were debriefed in full at the end of the
experiment.
Stimuli
Stimuli were presented on a 19?? Iiyama Vision-
master CRT viewed at approximately 50 cm. The
stimulus set consisted of images of 28 household
objects, 14 associated with the kitchen and 14
associated with the garage. Each original photo-
graph was converted into a black and white image,
and then selectively re-coloured using the colour
balance tool in Adobe Photoshop to create four
different coloured variants (blue, green, red, and
yellow); these photographs were then horizontally
mirrored to create eight different exemplars of
each object. Each participant responded to a left-
handed and right-handed version of each object,
one version was always s
r compatible, and a
different coloured version was always s
r incom-
patible. This resulted in 56 objects in each block.
The colour
compatibility pairing for each object
remained consistent throughout all five blocks for
each participant, although the colour
compatibility
pairings were randomised between participants.
For example, a single participant would encounter
the same 56 objects in all 5 blocks of the
experiment. If they responded to a blue s
r
compatible coffee mug and a red incompatible
coffee mug in the first block, then the s
r
compatible coffee mug would always be blue in
the remaining four blocks and the s
r incompa-
tible coffee mug would always be red.
Design
The s
r compatibility (and resulting sensorimotor
fluency) of the response was determined by both
the orientation and location of the target stimulus.
In the s
r compatible conditions, objects were
COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2010, 24 (4) 683
 CANNON, HAYES, TIPPER
presented on the same side of the screen as the
response hand and the object’s handle was grasp
compatible, and in the s
r incompatible condition
the object was presented on the opposite side of
the screen to the response hand and the object’s
handle was oriented away from the response
hand. The present study did not attempt to cross
the Simon and object affordance effects, and
always used these conditions combined (i.e., both
compatible or both incompatible). Key mappings
were counterbalanced across participants.
There were 56 trials in each block, which
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consisted of 28 repeats of the 2 s
r conditions, for
a total of 280 trials over 5 blocks. Blocks were
deliberately short to ensure that participants did
not become bored during the experiment as this
would result in yawning and inattention.
Procedure
After giving informed consent, the participant was
fitted with the EMG electrodes, as described
below. A cover story of ‘‘recording brain activity’’
was implemented to prevent participants from
realising that their facial muscle activity was being
recorded. Participants were debriefed at the end
of the experiment including the nature of the
electrodes, and these were demonstrated so that
participants could see their facial muscle activity on
screen. This also gave the experimenter an oppor-
tunity to assess whether the EMG apparatus
was measuring muscle activity correctly. No parti-
cipants guessed the purpose of the electrodes or
the nature of the experimental hypothesis.
In blocks 1
4 participants were asked to
categorise with left and right key presses pictures
of everyday objects as either belonging in the
garage or belonging in the kitchen. Participants
were instructed to respond as quickly and as
accurately as possible. In block 5 there was an
additional task; this was to rate how much they
liked the object that they had just categorised. The
key feature of this design is that participants were
not aware that they would be asked to rate the
objects while responding in the first four blocks
1
The AQ data was not used in the current study, but was collected for participant selection in other studies.
684 COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2010, 24 (4)
and were not aware that facial muscle activity was
being recorded.
Within the first four blocks the procedure was
as follows. Participants initiated trials by pressing
the spacebar. Following a 250 ms blank screen, a
fixation cross was displayed in the centre of the
screen for 1500 ms; an image of a kitchen or garage
object then appeared to the right or left of the
fixation cross for 300 ms followed by a blank screen
for 1700 ms. The categorisation response could be
made within the 2000 ms following stimulus onset
and immediately after the end of the blank screen
feedback regarding the accuracy of the response was
provided by one of two audible tones that signified
correct or incorrect responses. To end the trial, a
blank screen was displayed for 250 ms followed by
the message ‘‘relax’’ that was displayed for 2000 ms.
This procedure is displayed in Figure 1, left panel.
The procedure for block 5 was identical to that
of the first four blocks until the accuracy feedback
was given. Following the blank screen after
accuracy feedback, the trial stimulus was redis-
played but with a liking scale in the centre of the
screen (see Figure 1 right panel). The participant
was asked for a rating from 1 to 9 of ‘‘How much
did you like that object?’’ with 9 at the top of the
scale and the label ‘‘Like very much’’ and 1 at the
bottom of the scale and the label ‘‘Don’t like at
all’’. This value was reported verbally and entered
by an experimenter blind to the condition on a
separate keyboard.
EMG recording
Facial muscle activity was recorded from the zygo-
maticus major (cheek) and corrugator supercilii
(brow) muscles using pairs of silver/silver chloride
electrodes on the left side of the face. Electrode sites
were cleaned with alcohol swabs and prepared
by rubbing electrode gel into the contact site
(Fridlund & Cacioppo, 1986). After the electrodes
were attached, the participant had their visual
acuity and colour vision tested and completed the
Autism-Quotient questionnaire (Baron-Cohen,
Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin, & Clubley, 2001)1
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Blocks 1-4 Block 5: Liking Scale

EMG recording How much did you like that object?
like very much
untimed 1500 ms 300 ms 1700 ms 250 ms 2000 ms 9
-
8
-
“Press 7
spacebar -
+ + feedback tone “relax” 6
to
-
begin trial” 5
-
4
-
3
K G 2000 ms -
COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2010, 24 (4)

SENSORIMOTOR FLUENCY INFLUENCES AFFECT

Categorization response -
Kitchen/Garage 1
don't like at all

Figure 1. Left: a compatible response to a garage item taken from blocks 1
4. Facial EMG activity was recorded for 2500 ms starting from 500 ms prior to stimulus onset. Right: the liking
scale presented after each response in block 5.
685
 CANNON, HAYES, TIPPER
while the experimenter waited for the muscle
activity to settle to baseline level (this took
approximately 10 minutes).
Electromyographic activity was recorded using
a BIOPAC MP100 system with two EMG100C
electromyographic amplifiers at a sampling fre-
quency of 2 KHz. Raw EMG data were filtered
online with a high pass filter at 10 Hz, a low pass
filter at 500 Hz, a notch filter at 50 Hz, and were
amplified by 5000. These data were then
integrated, rectified, and recorded onto the hard
disk for offline analysis. These recorded data were
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standardised across participants and muscle sites
to allow meaningful comparisons to be made (this
process is similar to that reported by Winkielman
& Cacioppo, 2001). Change scores were calcu-
lated using the final 500 ms of the fixation screen
as a baseline, which was averaged and subtracted
from the trial data at 50 ms averaged intervals.
Data screening procedures
Trials were excluded from further analysis if they
were the first trial in a block (1.8%), when a
response was anticipatory and occurred within the
first 200 ms, or if trial RT exceeded 2.5 SD from
the participant’s mean RT for each condition
(3.1%). Trials that contained a response error or
immediately followed a response error (7.7%)
were excluded from RT and EMG analyses. An
analysis of errors was conducted on the response
error trials; trials that immediately followed
response error trials were not excluded from that
analysis.
RESULTS
Behavioural results
Reaction time and error data from blocks 1 to 5
were analysed using repeated-measures analyses of
variance (ANOVAs). There were no main effects
or interactions with the colour or category factors
and these data will not be discussed further.
As predicted, Compatible (M659, SD114)
responses result in significantly shorter reaction
times than Incompatible (M672, SD112)
686 COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2010, 24 (4)
responses, F(1, 23)4.88, p.04. Response
speed reduced across blocks, F(4, 92)30.67,
pB.001, independent of the Compatibility factor
(p.24). Also as predicted, categorisation errors
were less for Compatible (M3.1%, SD3.6)
than Incompatible (M4.9%, SD6.4) response
trials, F(1, 23)4.80, p.04. As with the
response speed data, performance improved across
blocks, F(4, 92)2.85, p.03, and matching the
RT data there was no interaction of Block by
Compatibility (p.46).
Electromyographic results
Two separate types of analysis were performed on
the muscle activity data for blocks 1 to 4. In the
stimulus-locked analysis, muscle data represent
participants’ facial response relative in time to the
onset of the stimulus object. In the response-
locked analysis, muscle data represent participants’
facial response relative to the categorisation
response on each trial, with 0 ms corresponding
with the categorisation response. These data are
shown in Figure 2.
Stimulus-locked EMG analysis
The muscle activity data for the entire time
course (0 ms
2000 ms) following stimulus onset
were analysed in two ANOVAs, one for each
muscle. These data were averaged into seven
300 ms time windows, and split by the Compat-
ibility factor. Prior analyses revealed no significant
main effects or interactions with the Block or
Colour factors, and these were excluded from
further analysis. For zygomaticus activity, there
was an overall difference in muscle activity with
higher cheek muscle activity on s
r Compatible
trials than Incompatible trials, F(1, 23)6.00,
p.02. This compatibility effect varied over the
time course, F(6, 138)3.44, p.003: there was
a significant difference (pB.05) in the 1200,
1500, and 1800 ms time periods revealed by
paired t-tests. For corrugator activity, there was
no significant difference in response to Compa-
tible and Incompatible trials (p.22) and this
effect did not vary across the time course (p.6).
These data are shown in Figure 2.
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COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2010, 24 (4)

SENSORIMOTOR FLUENCY INFLUENCES AFFECT

Figure 2. Electromyographic results for s
r compatibility. Stimulus-locked data with timing relative to stimulus onset presented at the top and response-locked data with timing relative to
the key-press response presented at the bottom. *p B.05.
687
 CANNON, HAYES, TIPPER
Response-locked EMG analysis
With the categorisation response set at 0 ms on
each trial, data were averaged into 300 ms time
windows for the period 300 ms pre-response to
1200 ms post-response. For the zygomaticus,
there was a marginally significant trend for
increased activity for Compatible trials, F(1,
23)3.52, p.07, and as with the stimulus
locked analysis this effect varied over the time
course, F(5, 115)2.48, p.04. Analysis of the
individual time bins revealed no significant effects
at pre-response (p.4), but after response there
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was significantly increased cheek muscle activity
for Compatible responses in the 900 ms and
1200 ms periods (pB.05). For the corrugator,
there was no significant difference between Com-
patible and Incompatible responses (p.38), and
this effect did not vary across the pre- and post-
response periods (p.30).
Liking data
Unlike the behavioural response data and the
EMG data, there was no effect of s
r compat-
ibility on explicit liking. Compatible objects
(M4.41, SD0.70) were not rated signifi-
cantly differently from Incompatible objects
(M4.36, SD0.65), p.87.
DISCUSSION
The data presented here demonstrate that positive
affect resulting from fluency is not restricted to
simple perceptual manipulations. Previous studies
have demonstrated that efficient perceptual pro-
cessing increases positive affect (Harmon-Jones &
Allen, 2001; Reber et al., 1998; Winkielman &
Cacioppo, 2001; Winkielman et al., 2006), but to
date these experiments had not tested whether
this effect exists for an embodied vision and action
system. As predicted, fast responses were found to
result in higher cheek muscle activity than slow
responses. These data suggest that the positive
affect resulting from perceptual fluency is not
restricted to purely perceptual manipulations, but
688 COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2010, 24 (4)
should be more broadly thought of as relating to
the efficiency of sensorimotor processing.
The procedure of combining Simon and Small
(1969) spatial compatibility with Tucker and Ellis
(1998) object affordance produced robust s
r
compatibility effects in both RTs and errors.
This predicted pattern of s
r compatibility effects
allowed us to test our hypothesis that sensori-
motor fluency would evoke specific affective
responses. As predicted, the activity of the
zygomaticus muscle mirrored the RT effect,
with increased activity when responses were fast
due to s
r compatibility.
The charts in Figure 2 show that divergence
between compatibility conditions for muscle
activity over the cheek increased across the time
course of the trial. To decode this activity further,
the response-locked analysis confirmed that
zygomaticus activity discriminates between s
r
conditions after the response is executed but not
while a response was prepared (in the 300 ms
period immediately prior to the response). These
findings suggest that fluency of action execution
may evoke positive affect, as well as fluency of
action simulation (e.g., Beilock & Holt, 2007;
Van den Bergh, Vrana, & Eelen, 1990).
As with previous investigations of fluency that
use EMG, a significant effect was only observed
in the zygomaticus cheek muscle (Harmon-Jones
& Allen, 2001; Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001;
Winkielman et al., 2006). Corrugator muscle
activity, which has been associated with negative
affect and with effort, was not influenced by
sensorimotor fluency. This suggests that fluency
resulting from simple perceptual processing and
performing simple sensorimotor tasks both only
influence positive affect. This result is in line with
Winkielman and Cacioppo’s model of hedonic
fluency, which asserts that fluency produces
specifically positive affective experiences. None-
theless, observation of Figure 2 promotes caution.
There were trends in the predicted direction for
the corrugator muscle activity, and this is espe-
cially noticeable in the response-locked data.
These trends in the data where corrugator activity
is greater in incompatible tasks are in line with the
findings of Topolinski et al. (2009). Therefore it

remains an open issue as to whether effects of
motor fluency can be detected in both corrugator
and zygomaticus muscles. Further work, perhaps
requiring more complex and effortful processing,
might detect corrugator effects.
It is interesting to observe that compatible
objects were not explicitly liked more than
incompatible objects. A similar experiment in-
vestigating gaze cueing (Bayliss et al., 2006)
successfully reported an explicit liking effect for
objects that were the target of an eye gaze. This
study used the same stimulus set as the present
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study, over six blocks, with explicit ratings made
in the final block using the same rating scale as
the present study. This suggests that the lack of an
explicit liking effect was not a methodological
artefact, and may demonstrate an implicit affec-
tive process. Positive affect may not have been
consciously accessible using the present explicit
measure, although this is not to suggest that it will
not influence subsequent behaviour. Therefore
the lack of effect when explicit verbal reports are
required does not challenge the conclusion that
efficient sensorimotor processing results in the
experience of positive affect.
Although previous studies have shown that
sensorimotor fluency can affect decision processes
such as personal-trait assignments (e.g., Bach &
Tipper, 2007; Tipper & Bach, 2008), this is the
first study to show that sensorimotor fluency
evokes positive emotions that can be detected
using direct recording techniques that do not
require conscious report. It is critical to note that
participants were unaware that their emotional
reaction was of any relevance to the experiment.
Their sole goal was simply to categorise objects as
quickly and accurately as possible; during the four
blocks when EMG were recorded, they had no
knowledge of the explicit liking rating task that
they would perform in the final block. Therefore
we can be confident that we are detecting
emotional responses that are implicit and not
affected by task demands. This is of importance as
it challenges accounts that argue that processing
fluency does not directly affect emotional reac-
tions. For example, as reviewed by Winkielman
and Cacioppo (2001), some models account for
SENSORIMOTOR FLUENCY INFLUENCES AFFECT
changes in explicit liking ratings due to perceptual
fluency without any reference to the affect system.
Rather, participants experience a change in pro-
cessing fluency, and then attempt to explain this
experience via the explicit task demands of
evaluating the stimuli. In this account there is
no direct emotional experience, only a subsequent
reinterpretation in terms of possible emotions.
The present data cannot be explained in this way.
Furthermore, the lack of an effect when liking was
measured with an explicit Likert scale also does
not support this account; these data therefore
support the hedonic model, in which fluency
produces a direct affective experience (Reber
et al., 1998; Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001;
Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, & Reber,
2003).
In the perceptual domain, it has been proposed
that the function of a fluency-related affective
signal is to provide information about the state of
processing and the environment, and to act as a
reward that might facilitate continued cognitive
processing (Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). In
the motor domain, affect evoked by fluent motor
actions likely acts as a reward that facilitates the
learning of optimal action patterns (Hayes, Paul,
Beuger, & Tipper, 2008). For example, positive
affect following action execution may have
important implications for sequence learning
findings (e.g., Willingham, Nissen, & Bullemer,
1989). In Willingham and colleagues’ work,
participants were required to press a specific key
whenever it was indicated by a corresponding
light. Responses were faster when the pattern of
responses follows a repeated sequence, even when
the participant was unaware that there was a
pattern. If positive affect such as occurred in the
present study also occurs whenever participants
make a rapid response in sequence learning tasks,
then it is possible that this positive affect acts as
an internal source of positive reinforcement for
that behaviour, moderating efficient sequence
learning. That is, we may detect small changes
in our cognitive processes through affective feed-
back and these positive feelings guide the devel-
opment of efficient behavioural patterns. This has
been described as the feeling-as-information
COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2010, 24 (4) 689
 CANNON, HAYES, TIPPER
heuristic (Schwarz, 1990), and in the current
study we hypothesise that this helps the system
detect subtle differences in sensorimotor fluency,
and adapt behaviour appropriately.
In summary, the data presented here support
previous studies in which ease of perceptual
processing results in the direct experience of
positive affect. These findings also extend pre-
vious research into fluency by demonstrating that
efficient action increases positive affect.
Manuscript received 20 February 2008
Downloaded By: [Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile] At: 14:30 1 October 2010
Revised manuscript received 25 February 2009
Manuscript accepted 18 March 2009
First published online 12 June 2009
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