Peer acceptance and rejection through the eyes of youth: Pupillary, eyetracking and ecological data from the Chatroom Interact task
Open accessAbstract
We developed an ecologically valid virtual peer interaction paradigm--the Chatroom Interact Task in which 60 pre-adolescents and adolescents (ages 9-17 years) were led to believe that they were interacting with other youth in a simulated internet chatroom. Youth received rejection and acceptance feedback from virtual peers. Findings revealed increased pupil dilation, an index of increased activity in cognitive and affective processing regions of the brain, to rejection compared to acceptance trials, which was greater for older youth. Data from a cell-phone Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) protocol completed following the task indicated that increased pupillary reactivity to rejection trials was associated with lower feelings of social connectedness with peers in daily life. Eyetracking analyses revealed attentional biases toward acceptance feedback and away from rejection feedback. Biases toward acceptance feedback were stronger for older youth. Avoidance of rejection feedback was strongest among youth with increased pupillary reactivity to rejection, even in the seconds leading up to and following rejection feedback. These findings suggest that adolescents are sensitive to rejection feedback and seek to anticipate and avoid attending to rejection stimuli. Furthermore, the salience of social rejection and acceptance feedback appears to increase during adolescence.
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Adolescents are prone to intensified emotional and stress responses to peer evaluation.
“and are prone to intensified emotional and stress responses to peer evaluation (15–18).”
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“Experimental designs are typically more adaptive to these types of contexts, for example, by designing tasks such as a Chatroom task (Silk et al., 2012) or a driving task (Chein et al., 2011), whereas questionnaires are usually more strongly grounded in historical context (Palenzuela-Luis et al.,…”
- Authors
- Silk, J. S., Stroud, L. R., Siegle, G. J., Dahl, R. E., Lee, K. H., & Nelson, E. E.
- Affiliations
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Venue
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2011-08-23
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 93-105
- ISSN
- 1749-5016 (ISSN-L)
- 1749-5024
- PMC
- PMC3252631
- OpenAlex
- W2139616223
- Cited by
- 187
- References
- 63
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 8.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- University of Pittsburgh (UL1RR024153, RR024153)
- Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance (UL‐1 RR024153)
- National Institutes of Health (RR024153)
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH091327)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R21DA024144)
- National Center for Research Resources (RR-024153, UL1RR024153)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Keywords
- social rejection, social acceptance, peer acceptance, peer rejection, pupil dilation, pupil reactivity, attentional bias, adolescents, preadolescents, social connectedness, ecological momentary assessment, rejection avoidance, age differences
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Age Factors, Attention, Brain, Child, Emotions, Female, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Peer Group, Pupil, Psychological Distance
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