Social feedback processing from early to late adolescence: influence of sex, age, and attachment style

Brain and Behavior

Pascal Vrtička²  David Sander⁴  Brittany Anderson⁴  Deborah Badoud¹  Stephan Eliez³ 

[1] Adolescence Clinical Psychology Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland;Department of Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany;Office Médico-Pédagogique Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Geneva School of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland;Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

关键词: Adolescence;    age;    attachment style;    fMRI;    sex;    social feedback processing;   

DOI  :  10.1002/brb3.251

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

Objective

The establishment of an accurate understanding of one's social context is a central developmental task during adolescence. A critical component of such development is to learn how to integrate the objective evaluation of one's behavior with the social response to the latter—here referred to as social feedback processing.

Case report

We measured brain activity by means of fMRI in 33 healthy adolescents (12–19 years old, 14 females). Participants played a difficult perceptual game with integrated verbal and visual feedback. Verbal feedback provided the participants with objective performance evaluation (won vs. lost). Visual feedback consisted of either smiling or angry faces, representing positive or negative social evaluations. Together, the combination of verbal and visual feedback gave rise to congruent versus incongruent social feedback combinations. In addition to assessing sex differences, we further tested for the effects of age and attachment style on social feedback processing. Results revealed that brain activity during social feedback processing was significantly modulated by sex, age, and attachment style in prefrontal cortical areas, ventral anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, caudate, and amygdala/hippocampus. We found indication for heightened activity during incongruent social feedback processing in females, older participants, and individuals with an anxious attachment style. Conversely, we observed stronger activity during processing of congruent social feedback in males and participants with an avoidant attachment style.

Conclusion

Our findings not only extend knowledge on the typical development of socio-emotional brain function during adolescence, but also provide first clues on how attachment insecurities, and particularly attachment avoidance, could interfere with the latter mechanisms.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.