A Study On The Developmental Characteristic And Event Related Potential Of University Students’ Self-control

Self control is a complex mental structure with multi-dimension and multi-level, it’s thecore concept of personality, who plays a crucial role in individual social development andmany important areas of life. University stage is a critical period of development, it not only aprocess of accumulate knowledge, but also a continuous process of self-planning andself-control, only to better one’s self-control can complete the university development tasksuccessfully. Based on the comprehensively theoretical and empirical studies of self controlamong undergraduate, the purpose of the study is to surround the structure, developmentalcharacteristic and brain mechanism of undergraduate’s self control.Study1: The formation of university students’ self control self-assessment questionnaireand the survey of their self control development characteristics. Based on combing andmodifying preliminary studies, combined with the open-ended questionnaire, we draw upuniversity students’ self control self-assessment questionnaire. Through exploratory factoranalysis and confirmatory factor analysis we scientifically discuss university students’ selfcontrol structure, then we examine the questionnaire’s reliability and validity. Used theself-made “university students’ self control self-assessment questionnaire” investigate thegrade and gender differences of university students’ self control. The results showed asfollows:①the university students’ self control self-assessment questionnaire have goodreliability and validity, can be used as a effective tool to evaluate of university students’ selfcontrol level.②the exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis show that theuniversity students’ self control consists of five factors: Planning, Persistence, Rulescompliance, Self delayed of gratification and Impulse inhibition; The model with five factorsis reasonable and effectiveness.③university students’ self-control development levels tend tobe stable, the score of the university students’ self-control is basically presents an upwardtrend with grade, there was no significant difference between each grade. Levels of collegegirls’ self-control were significantly higher than boys’.Study2: The brain characteristics of university students’ self control. Mental activity isthe brain function, so this study discuss from the cognitive perspective, use different paradigmand through the ERP experiment to investigate university students’ self-control related brainmechanism. We respectively from two aspects of behavioral inhibition and cognitiveinhibition to study inhibitory control characteristics of university students, and compare twoaspects of the study to investigate university students’ self-control related brain mechanism.The results showed as follows:①In the Go/Nogo experiments, Nogo stimulus can induce aapparent Nogo-N2and Nogo-P3, The Nogo effect significantly; In the Stroop test, the stimulus whose word’s color is inconsistent with the meaning of the word induce greaterN450, the Stroop interference effect is remarkable.②The Go/Nogo task and Stroop task isinterconnected and difference significant, respectively embodies the behavior inhibition andcognitive inhibition of inhibitory control. Stroop task is more complicated than the Go/Nogotask.Study3: The brain characteristics of university students with different level of selfcontrol. This study unite “university students’ self control self-assessment questionnaire” andthe event related potentials (ERPs) experiment, combining questionnaire data and electricaldata, to explore whether the N2and P3component can predict the level of self-control, and tofind the developmental characteristics of self-control brain mechanisms of the universitystudents with different levels. The results showed as follows:①In the Go/Nogo experiments,the smaller N2peak amplitude related higher ability of university students’ self-control,Impulse inhibition, Persistence, Rules compliance; the smaller P3peak amplitude relatedhigher ability of university students’ self-control, Impulse inhibition, Persistence, Rulescompliance.②In the Stroop test, the smaller P3peak amplitude related higher ability ofuniversity students’ self-control, Impulse inhibition, Persistence; the smaller N450peakamplitude related higher ability of university students’ self-control, Impulse inhibition,Persistence.