Neural Sensitivity to Peer Feedback and Depressive Symptoms: Moderation by Executive Function

Abstract

Theories of adolescent development suggest that elevated neural sensitivity to social evaluation confers tradeoffs for adolescents’ wellbeing, promoting adaptation to changing social contexts but increasing risk for emotional distress and depression. This study investigated whether the association between neural processing of peer feedback and depressive symptoms depends on teacher‐reported executive function (EF) ability in adolescent girls. Girls showed activation to negative and positive peer feedback in regions implicated in social–emotional processing that interacted with EF to predict depressive symptoms. Specifically, activation predicted more depression in youth with poorer EF but less depression in youth with better EF, suggesting that the impact of increased social sensitivity may depend on youths’ ability to regulate this sensitivity in adaptive ways.