Study On The Characteristics And Mechanisms Of Athletes' Executive Control In Different Emotion

Fast and accurate decision-making and response are required for athletes for peak performance. The situation in sports is complex and unpredictable, and the information always does not match the advantaged reaction of athletes. Therefore, in decision making, athletes need to obtain useful information, exclude interference of irrelevant information and suppress the formation of unnecessary but advantaged reactions and ultimately make a coordinated and flexible response. Executive function is to ensure the successful completion of this process, the higher cognitive functions, and conflict control is an important aspect of executive function. Athletes'decision-making is affected by many factors. however, asthe persistent state of brain, emotion has a function of driving the cognitive processing. As higher cognitive functions for coordination of cognitive processes, executive functions are also affected by emotional factors.In this study, basis on the Differential Emotions Theory and Active-inhibition Model, we induced the different emotions (positive neutral and negative) of athletes by photos on the topic of sports. Simon task, a research paradigm on conflict control, Delta analysis and the event-related potential techniques (ERP) were used to find the characteristics and mechanism of the impact of emotion on athletes' executive control in order to enrich researches on the relationship between athletes'emotion and performance.The main results were:athletes'emotional states impacted their decision-making. Compared with neutral emotion, without affecting the accuracy of the case, the speed of decision-making was slower in positive emotion and faster in negative emotion; athletes'decision-making was influenced by the type of task, and their decision-making was bad in the tasks with conflict; Emotional state affected the timing and intensity of conflict control. Compared with neutral emotion, the control of conflict occurred late but strong in positive emotions and early but weak in negative emotions. P1,N1, P2, N2, ERP components, were in induced during decision making.P1:Compared with neutral emotion, it has longer peak latency with activation in frontal, left temporal lobe and the left occipital region in positive emotion, while it has shorter peak latency with activation in frontal and left occipital lobe in negative emotions.N1:the peak latency and peak amplitude was longest and largest in positive emotion and they are shortest and smallest in neutral emotion, while they are in the middle level in negative emotion.N1 was activated in the back of brain;P2:larger activated in frontal and occipital, longer peak latency and bigger peak amplitude were induced in the larger area of frontal and occipital lobe in positive emotion, while shortest peak latency, smallest peak amplitude, and smallest activation area in the neutral emotion. They are in the middle level in negative emotion.N2:Compared with neutral emotion, there was shorter peak latency and larger peak amplitude in left hemisphere in positive emotion, while there was shorter peak latency and larger peak amplitude in right hemisphere in positive emotion. There was activation in prefrontal cortex and left occipital lobe among the three types of emotions.Conclusions:â‘ Emotion states and task difficulty are two main effects on athletes'decision making. Compared with neutral emotion, speed of decision making was lower in positive emotion and faster in negative emotion. Decision making declined with the increase of task difficulty.â‘¡the characteristics of conflict control differ in different emotion, and the differences are occurred in the speed and intensity of conflict control. Compared with neutral emotion, the control over conflict is slower but stronger in positive emotion, whereas it is faster but weak in negative emotion.â‘¢the impacts of emotional state on athletes'executive control were to modulate the speed and intensity of cognitive processing including attention, identification and suppression. Positive emotion makes the process of attention, recognition and inhibition completed fully, whereas negative emotion makes the process of attention, identification and suppression completed rapid. Compared with other two emotions, the influence of neutral emotion on the speed and intensity of cognitive processing are small.