Previous studies have shown that the process of attribution of intentions starts as early as 200ms post-stimulus and continues up to 650ms, having been associated with an ERP (event-related potentials) marker called intention ERP effect. In previous investigation we found that this effect comprises two distinct components: P200 80-250ms) and P300 (250- 400ms). The present study builds on these studies, using ERPs to investigate electrophysiological markers of attribution of intentions based on a non-verbal social cognition task, while testing for differences in the processes of attribution of intentions between men and women. Forty-one university students (20 men) performed a comic-strip task that represented an intentional action (AI), a physical causality with human characters, or a physical causality without human characters, while their electroencephalographic signal was recorded. There were no differences in behavioral performance between genders. We found a bilateral posterior positive component with greater amplitude in the AI condition, comprising the P200 and P300 components, corroborating previous studies. No differences were observed between genders for the P200 component. Amplitude of the P300 component did not differ between genders in the AI condition, yet it was significantly higher in women in the two other conditions. Moreover, the ERP morphology was more consistent across conditions in women than in men. These results suggest that women employ greater efforts to process and integrate information under different conditions.

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social cognition,attribution of intentions,P200,P300,gender