The Detection and the Neural Correlates of Behavioral (Prior) Intentions

摘要

Prior intentions are abstract mental representations that arenbelieved to be the prime cause of our intentional actions. To date,nonly a few studies have focused on the possibility that single priornintentions could be identified in peopleʼs minds. Here, for thenfirst time, we used the autobiographical Implicit Association Testn(aIAT) in order to identify a specific prior intention on the basis of anpattern of associations derived from reaction times (Experiment 1).nThe aIAT is based on two critical blocks: the block associating intentionsnwith true sentences (congruent block) gave rise to fasternreaction times (RTs) than the block associating intentions withnfalse sentences (incongruent block). Furthermore, when comparingnintentions with hopes, it was revealed that the reported effectnwas intention-specific: The pattern of associations reflected a congruencyneffect when intentions and the logical category “True”nwere paired, but not when hopes and the “True” category werenpaired (Experiment 2). Finally, we investigated the neural bases ofnthe congruency effect that leads to the identification of an intentionn(Experiment 3). We found a reduced late positive componentn(LPC) for the incongruent with respect to the congruentnblock, suggesting that the incongruent block needs additional resourcesnof cognitive control with respect to the congruentnblock.