Social feedback processing from early to late adolescence: influence of sex, age, and attachment style
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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.
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“Variability in these studies may be related to aspects of study design, including the real-world motivational salience of rewards offered (Nelson et al., 2005; Vrtička et al., 2014) and the relative amounts of punishment and reward in the task (Cohen et al., 2010; Davidson et al., 2006; van den Bos et al., 2012; van der Schaaf et al., 2011; van Duijvenvoorde et al., 2008).”
From Does puberty mark a transition in sensitive periods for plasticity in the associative neocortex? (2017) · cites this paper as Vrtička et al., 2014
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- Authors
- Vrtička, P., Sander, D., Anderson, B., Badoud, D., Eliez, S., & Debbané, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Geneva (CH)
- Adolescence Clinical Psychology Research Unit Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences University of Geneva Geneva Switzerland
- Office Médico‐Pédagogique Research Unit Department of Psychiatry University of Geneva School of Medicine Geneva Switzerland
- Corresponding author
- Vrtička, Pascal
- Venue
- Brain and Behavior
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2014-07-23
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 703-720
- ISSN
- 2157-9032 (ISSN-L)
- 2162-3279
- PMC
- PMC4113975
- OpenAlex
- W2149513600
- Cited by
- 43
- References
- 57
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 6
- FWCI
- 2.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Brain and Behavior (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Keywords
- adolescence, attachment styles, attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, sex differences, age differences, social evaluation, prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, ventral anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, caudate nucleus, social-emotional development
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Age Factors, Brain, Brain Mapping, Child, Emotions, Facial Expression, Female, Games, Experimental, Humans, Internal-External Control, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Object Attachment, Surveys and Questionnaires, Sex Factors, Social Behavior, Social Environment, Feedback, Psychological
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