Audience effects on the neural correlates of relational reasoning in adolescence

Iroise Dumontheil,Laura K Wolf,Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.05.001

Iroise Dumontheil, Laura K Wolf + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.05.001

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Abstract

Adolescents are particularly sensitive to peer influence. This may partly be due to an increased salience of peers during adolescence. We investigated the effect of being observed by a peer on a cognitively challenging task, relational reasoning, which requires the evaluation and integration of multiple mental representations. Relational reasoning tasks engage a fronto-parietal network including the inferior parietal cortex, pre-supplementary motor area, dorsolateral and rostrolateral prefrontal cortices. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), peer audience effects on activation in this fronto-parietal network were compared in a group of 19 female mid-adolescents (aged 14–16 years) and 14 female adults (aged 23–28 years). Adolescent and adult relational reasoning accuracy was influenced by a peer audience as a function of task difficulty: the presence of a peer audience led to decreased accuracy in the complex, relational integration condition in both groups of participants. The fMRI results demonstrated that a peer audience differentially modulated activation in regions of the fronto-parietal network in adolescents and adults. Activation was increased in adolescents in the presence of a peer audience, while this was not the case in adults.

Highlights

Adolescence is defined as the period of life that starts with puberty and ends when an individual attains a stable, independent role in society (Lerner and Steinberg, 2004)
While the majority of experimental studies investigating peer influence in adolescence have focused on risky- or reward-related decision-making, we recently found that adolescents’, but not adults’, performance in a relational reasoning task was sensitive to a peer audience in a behavioural study (Wolf et al, 2015)
For accuracy, there was a main effect of Task: participants were less accurate in the Relational

Summary

Introduction

Adolescence is defined as the period of life that starts with puberty and ends when an individual attains a stable, independent role in society (Lerner and Steinberg, 2004). Substantial changes in the social environment occur during adolescence; in particular, adolescents’ relationships with peers become increasingly important (Brown, 2004). These environmental changes are thought to coincide with a heightened sensitivity to social contexts and influence adolescent behaviour (Blakemore and Mills, 2014). Tests such as the USA Law School Admission Test include sections (Logic Games, Logical Reasoning) that heavily tax relational reasoning (Mackey et al, 2012). If relational reasoning performance is affected by the presence of an audience (e.g. other students, known teachers or neutral invigilators), this may have consequences in terms of test outcomes and future academic progression of pupils

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