Autobiographically Recalled Emotional States Impact Forward Gait Initiation as a Function of Motivational Direction Bradley Fawver, Chris J. Hass, Kyoungshin D. Park, and Christopher M. Janelle University of Florida The impact of self-generated affective states on self-initiated motor behavior remains unspecified. The purpose of the current study was to determine how self-generated emotional states impact forward gait initiation. Participants recalled past emotional experiences (anger, fear, happy, sad, and neutral), “re- lived” those emotional memories before gait initiation (GI), and then walked 4 m across the laboratory floor. Kinetic and kinematic data revealed GI characteristics consistent with a motivational direction hypothesis. Specifically, participants produced greater posterior-lateral displacement and velocity of their center of pressure (COP) during the initial phase of GI after self-generation of happy and anger emotional states relative to sad ones. During the second phase of GI, greater medial displacement of COP was found during the happy condition compared with sad, greater velocity was occasioned during happy and angry trials compared with sad, and greater velocity was exhibited after happy compared with fear memories. Finally, greater anterior velocity was produced by participants during the final phase of GI for happy and angry memories compared with sad ones. Steady state kinetic and kinematic data when recalling happy and angry memories (longer, faster, and more forceful stepping behavior) followed the anticipatory postural adjustments noted during GI. Together the results from GI and steady state gait provide robust evidence that self-generated emotional states impact forward gait behavior based on motivational direction. Endogenous manipulations of emotional states hold promise for clinical and performance interventions aimed at improving self-initiated movement. Keywords: affect, memory, center of pressure, approach, velocity Emotions prioritize behavioral responses to appetitive and aver- sive stimuli in the environment (Frijda, 2009; Lang, 1995, 2000). Researchers are increasingly concerned with identifying the un- derlying mechanisms that regulate behavioral responses to discrete emotions. Discrete emotional reactions are traditionally elicited during experimental manipulations of exogenous, or externally evoked emotional stimuli (e.g., images, Bradley, Codispoti, Cuth- bert, & Lang, 2001; video clips, Faivre, Charron, Roux, Lehéricy, & Kouider, 2012). Emotional responses can also be evoked through endogenous, or self-generated, methods, such as recalling past emotional experiences (e.g., Crane & Gross, 2013; Kop et al., 2011; Labouvie-Vief, Lumley, Jain, & Heinze, 2003; Levenson, Carstensen, Friesen, & Ekman, 1991; Philippot, Schaefer, & Her- bette, 2003). Endogenous emotion elicitation methods offer unique advantages in addressing critical questions concerning how affec- tive states engage and influence motor planning strategies. Be- cause most motor tasks of daily living (such as walking) are not executed in response to overt emotional cues, determining the influence of emotion on self-initiated movement also holds prag- matic value for performance and clinical domains. The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether self-generated emotional states differentially impact the self-initiation of gait. Of continuing interest to both affective and motor scientists is the degree to which emotional states motivate alterations in move- ments made in anterior and posterior directions. A secondary purpose of this study, therefore, was to determine how the moti- vational direction properties of endogenously generated emotions specifically predispose motor planning responses when gait is initiated in the forward direction. Endogenous Emotion Elicitation Participants engaging in autobiographical emotion recall are cued to generate a detailed mental representation of physiological sensations, thoughts, subjective feelings, and behaviors associated with the emotions experienced during a past event (for a review of emotion and autobiographical recall, see Holland & Kensinger, 2010). Numerous investigations have concentrated primarily on recognizing emotions in actors and nonactors (e.g., Crane & Gross, 2013; Janssen et al., 2008). Other than emotion detection, previous work has also focused on the impact of self-generated affective states on neural activity (e.g., Damasio et al., 2000; Phan, Wager, Taylor, & Liberzon, 2002) and various biological response sys- tems (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance, and blood pressure; Dama- sio et al., 2000; Kop et al., 2011; Levenson et al., 1991). Emotional memories are vivid, powerful, and resistant to decay (Buchanan, 2007). The subjective, behavioral, and physiological characteristics of emotional reactions evoked during autobiograph- ical recall are similar to reaction experienced using exogenous This article was published Online First August 25, 2014. Bradley Fawver, Chris J. Hass, Kyoungshin D. Park, and Christopher M. Janelle, Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology, University of Florida. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Bradley Fawver, Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology, University of Florida, P.O. Box 118205, 100 FLG, Gainesville, FL 32611. E-mail: bfawver@hhp.ufl.edu This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Emotion © 2014 American Psychological Association 2014, Vol. 14, No. 6, 1125–1136 1528-3542/14/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037597 1125