Abstract
Increased social awareness is a hallmark of adolescence. The primary aim of this event-related potential study was to investigate whether adolescents, in comparison to adults, would show relatively enhanced early neural processing of complex pictures containing socially-relevant information. A secondary aim was to investigate whether there are also gender and age differences in the ways adolescents and adults process social and nonsocial information. We recorded EEGs from 12–17 year-olds and 25–37 year-olds (N = 59) while they viewed pleasant pictures from the International Affective Picture System. We found age-related amplitude differences in the N1 and the LPP, and gender-related differences in the N2 region for socially-relevant stimuli. Social pictures (featuring mostly young children and adults) elicited larger N1s than nonsocial stimuli in adolescents, but not adults, whereas larger LPPs to social stimuli were seen in adults, but not adolescents. Furthermore, in general, males (regardless of age) showed larger N2s to nonsocial than to social images, but females did not. Our results imply that compared to adults, adolescents show relatively greater initial orientation toward social than toward nonsocial stimuli.
Highlights
As social creatures, humans are wired to pay attention to other people
Pleasant pictures elicited larger N1 amplitudes in adolescents than adults, which is consistent with the growing literature that suggests that adolescence is a period of heightened responsivity to affective cues in general [45]
Given the early timing of the N1 (150 to 210 ms), our findings lead us to the interpretation that for adolescents, social images draw initial attention more effectively than other motivationally salient stimuli
Summary
Humans are wired to pay attention to other people. During adolescence there is a marked growth in the number and complexity of social relationships, among peers [1], and so it becomes increasingly important for adolescents to accurately read social cues and respond . The abilities to recognize different people and to differentiate between facial expressions continue to develop throughout childhood and adolescence [3,6,7,8,9,10,11]. More complex social skills are still developing during adolescence, including the abilities to imagine another person’s viewpoint and to successfully evaluate interactions with others [2,3,12,13]
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