Abstract
Adolescence is a critical period for the neurodevelopment of social-emotional processing, wherein the automatic detection of changes in facial expressions is crucial for the development of interpersonal communication. Two groups of participants (an adolescent group and an adult group) were recruited to complete an emotional oddball task featuring on happy and one fearful condition. The measurement of event-related potential was carried out via electroencephalography and electrooculography recording, to detect visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) with regard to the automatic detection of changes in facial expressions between the two age groups. The current findings demonstrated that the adolescent group featured more negative vMMN amplitudes than the adult group in the fronto-central region during the 120–200 ms interval. During the time window of 370–450 ms, only the adult group showed better automatic processing on fearful faces than happy faces. The present study indicated that adolescent’s posses stronger automatic detection of changes in emotional expression relative to adults, and sheds light on the neurodevelopment of automatic processes concerning social-emotional information.
Highlights
From a neurodevelopmental perspective, adolescence is a crucial period for cognitive and emotional development (Paus, 2005; Steinberg, 2005; Yurgelun-Todd, 2007; Casey et al, 2008; Ahmed et al, 2015)
Facial expressions encode essential social-emotional information, wherein the appropriate perception and interpretation of facial expression is important for the development and maturation of social-emotional processing in adolescence (Monk et al, 2003; Herba and Phillips, 2004; Taylor et al, 2004; Guyer et al, 2008; Hare et al, 2008; Passarotti et al, 2009; Segalowitz et al, 2010; Scherf et al, 2012; van den Bulk et al, 2012)
Electrophysiological studies indicate that several event-related potential (ERP) components are associated with different stages of facial expression processing
Summary
Adolescence is a crucial period for cognitive and emotional development (Paus, 2005; Steinberg, 2005; Yurgelun-Todd, 2007; Casey et al, 2008; Ahmed et al, 2015). The adolescent brain appears to be more emotionally driven, featuring heightened sensitivity to affective information and a subsequent increase in vulnerability to affective disorders (Monk et al, 2003; Dahl, 2004; Taylor et al, 2004; Scherf et al, 2011) This vulnerability likely reflects the high risk for mood and behavioral disorders observed during adolescence (Nelson et al, 2005; Blakemore, 2008; Casey et al, 2008). LPP amplitudes are greater in response to emotional rather than neutral stimuli (Kujawa et al, 2012a,b)
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