Randomized experiment reveals self-control depletion impairs executive function in impoverished children, indicating price salience drives cognitive resource loss.
Key Points
To examine how attention and self-control resource depletion integrate to disrupt executive function among children experiencing economic poverty.
Assessed 181 Chinese children (mean age 10.73 years; 48.62% boys), including 94 living in poverty.
Randomly assigned participants to one of three priming conditions: attention depletion (passive viewing), self-control depletion (active purchasing), or non-depletion.
Evaluated subsequent executive function performance and visual attention to prices using eye tracking.
Impoverished children demonstrated significantly worse executive function in the self-control depletion condition compared to attention depletion or non-depletion conditions.
Under self-control depletion, children in poverty allocated more visual attention to prices than non-impoverished children.
Increased price viewing predicted significant declines in executive function specifically within the poverty group.