| Self-control and action intention understanding have a common neural basis-the prefrontal cortex.However,few studies have explored whether there is a relationship between them.Previous studies mostly constructed two different levels of self-control resources via visual inhibitory task and cognitive interference tasks.In most studies,action was typically catalogued as the type of intention(e.g.,intentions of private and communicative actions)and the level of intention(i.e.,‘how they are do it’ and ‘why they are do it’).Therefore,this paper aimed to explore the influence of self-control on the neural mechanism of action intention understanding through a 2x2x2 hybrid design and by using visual inhibitory task and the cognitive interference task.Experiment 1 utilized the visual inhibitory task.It was found that the higher depletion group induced stronger amplitudes of P300 and average late positive component(LPC)than the control(ps<0.05).This may be because the consumption of self-control resources resulted in lower processing efficiency in understanding of action intention.Thus higher depletion group would pay more psychological resources in the sequential understanding of the action intention.Experiment 2 used cognitive interference task.It was observed that three main ERP components,N250,N400 and LPC occurred during the understanding of action intention.There were significantly larger amplitudes of N250 and N400(p<0.05 and p<0.01)for the intention of private action compared to the intention of communicative action while the self-control resources had no effect on the understanding of action intention.In contrast,the intention of communicative action elicited significantly larger average amplitudes of LPC than the intention of private action.Specially,in the case of depletion,the communicative intention elicited a lager amplitude(p < 0.05)than the private intention,but it was not true in the case of control,indicating that self-control resources had an influence on the understanding of action intentions to some extent.This may be because the consumption of self-control resources may lead to a decrease in the processing efficiency of the brain regions related to the theory of mind.As a result,participants with higher depletion in self-control resource need to invest more psychological resources in the sequential understanding of communication intentions with more complexes.In brief,self-control resources play an important impact on the understanding of action intentions,especially for the late process of the intention understanding and the communication intentions with more complexes. |
