Transfer of Approach-Avoidance Training: Motoric or Goal-Related?

Approach-avoidance training (AAT) procedures were developed with the prospect that they can modify action impulses to approach or avoid specific stimuli. Research suggested that the outcome of AAT procedures is mediated by training-induced changes in implicit response tendencies. This study investigated whether AAT procedures affect implicit response tendencies because of a training of goal-related responses or due to a training of motoric actions effecting approach and avoidance. Participants in three internet-based experiments (total n = 514) were trained to approach and avoid two fictitious social groups by steering a symbolic representation of the self towards and away from group members. They alternated between the training task and a flanker-like test task that probed for training-induced changes in response tendencies consistent with the trained action or with the trained AA goal. Results demonstrated a transfer of relations between the stimuli and AA goals from training to test tasks. In contrast, relations to the motoric acts subserving these goals had no effect on implicit response tendencies. It is concluded that a relation to approach- and avoidance related goals, and not to the motoric action, were established with the AAT procedure. Implications for associative and inferential accounts of AAT effects are discussed.