Differential effects of parent and peer presence on neural correlates of risk taking in adolescence

Abstract

Adolescence is a developmental period associated with increased health-risk behaviors and unique sensitivity to the input from the social context, paralleled by major changes in the developing brain. Peer presence increases adolescent risk taking, associated with greater reward-related activity, while parental presence decreases risk taking, associated with decreased reward-related activity and increased cognitive control. Yet the effects specific to peers and parents are still unknown. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study compared within-person peer and parent influences on risky decision-making during adolescence (ages 12–15 years; N = 56). Participants completed the Yellow Light Game (YLG), a computerized driving task, during which they could make safe or risky decisions, in the presence of a peer and their parent. Behavioral findings revealed no effects of social context on risk taking. At the neural level, a collection of affective, social and cognitive regions [ventral striatum (VS), temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC)] was more active during decision-making with peers than parents. Additionally, functional connectivity analyses showed greater coupling between affective, social and cognitive control regions (VS-insula, VS-TPJ) during decision-making with parents than peers. These findings highlight the complex nature of social influence processes in peer and parent contexts, and contribute to our understanding of the opportunities and vulnerabilities associated with adolescent social sensitivity.

Genetic and environmental influences on structure of the social brain in childhood

“…Interestingly, the TPJ in particular showed a relatively high estimated influence of shared environment on both surface area and cortical thickness. The TPJ is consistently activated during social processing and social decision-making ( Burnett et al, 2008 ; van der Meulen et al, 2016 ; van Hoorn et al, 2016a ; van Hoorn et al, 2018 ). Given that social processing is dependent on environmental input, the TPJ might therefore be particularly sensitive to the social environment.…”

Neural sensitivity to conflicting attitudes supports greater conformity toward positive over negative influence in early adolescence

“…In addition to our primary focus on context-dependent differences in conformity rates, we explored the relative influence of parents vs. peers, particularly when both endorsed attitudes that conflicted with adolescents’ attitudes. The handful of studies that have compared parent and peer influence during adolescence have yielded inconsistent findings, with reports of no differences ( Chassin et al, 1986 ; van Hoorn et al, 2018 ) or one source outweighing the other, for unconstructive behaviors ( Cook et al, 2009 ; Sawyer and Stevenson, 2008 ) and constructive behaviors ( Malonda et al, 2019 ) alike. To investigate how adolescents reconcile opposing attitudes from both their parents and peers, we leveraged our unique study design to explore whether there were differences in overall rates of conformity toward parents’ or peers’ conflicting attitudes at the behavioral and neural level.…”

Maternal Buffering of Adolescent Dysregulation in Socially Appetitive Contexts: From Behavior to the Brain

“…The dACC is associated with social stress (Schriber et al, 2018), suggesting that the monitoring of a caregiver may induce social motivation to improve performance during adolescence. The fusiform gyrus has been proposed to detect salient social information (Nelson, Leibenluft, McClure, & Pine, 2005) and is implicated during adolescent decisionmaking in the presence of mothers and peers (Guassi Moreira & Telzer, 2018;van Hoorn, McCormick, Rogers, Ivory, & Telzer, 2018). The fusiform gyrus may be integral for adolescent decision-making in the context of salient social others, particularly for aligning performance toward the observing entity's desires (i.e., accuracy for mothers, risk taking for risky peers).…”