Probing the Neural Correlates of Anticipated Peer Evaluation in Adolescence

Abstract

Neural correlates of social-cognition were assessed in 9-to-17-year-olds (N = 34) using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants appraised how unfamiliar peers they had previously identified as being of high or low interest would evaluate them for an anticipated online chat session. Differential age-and sexrelated activation patterns emerged in several regions previously implicated in affective processing. These included the ventral striatum, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and insula. In general, activation patterns shifted with age in older relative to younger females but showed no association with age in males. Relating these neural response patterns to changes in adolescent social-cognition enriches theories of adolescent social development through enhanced neurobiological understanding of social behavior.

Neurocognitive bases of emotion regulation development in adolescence

“…A similar pattern of results was seen in an fMRI study using a more ecologically valid 'chatroom' task in which social stress is created by participants being rejected by virtual peers, relative to being accepted (Guyer et al, 2009). Adolescents are likely to encounter peer rejection in everyday life, and may show greater sensitivity to its effects than do adults (Sebastian et al, 2010a).…”

“…There have also been several studies which have looked at the neural bases of typical adolescent responses to peer rejection in the absence of an explicit instruction to regulate (Guyer et al, 2009;Masten et al, 2009;Sebastian et al, 2011), although participants are fully aware of being rejected and of the negative emotions generated, meaning participants may use explicit regulatory strategies spontaneously. One longitudinal fMRI study explored relationships between neural responses to social rejection and depressive symptoms one year later in 20 13-year olds .…”

Perceived live interaction modulates the developing social brain

“…For example, researchers have investigated how children respond to potential future interaction (e.g. Guyer et al, 2009Guyer et al, , 2012, how adolescents make decisions when observed (Chein et al, 2011), and how children respond to social rejection (e.g. Bolling et al, 2011;Will et al, 2016).…”

Social anxiety disorder in adolescence: How developmental cognitive neuroscience findings may shape understanding and interventions for psychopathology

“…Turning to paradigms that measure participants' automatic regulatory responses to more complex socially provocative stimuli (f. ex. tasks that simulate online social exclusion), these have found more extensive differences occurring in the insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and medial and lateral functional subdivisions of the PFC between children, adolescents and adults (e.g., Gunther Moor et al, 2010Moor et al, , 2012Guyer et al, 2009;Lau et al, 2011a,b;Masten et al, 2009;Sebastian et al, 2011). However inconsistencies in the directionality of these differences across studies makes drawing interpretations about developmental change difficult.…”

“…Tasks that present more dynamic social exchanges have replicated and extended these data (e.g., Jarcho et al, 2013a,b). For example, studies using the 'Chat Room Task' (e.g., Guyer et al, 2009), which presents participants with photographs of peers that the participant either 'accepted' or 'rejected' for online interactions in a previous session, have found differential responses in both, anticipation and postevent processing. When anticipating feedback from the previously 'rejected' peers, adolescents with social concerns manifested greater amygdala activity relative to non-anxious adolescents.…”