Social influences of error monitoring in adolescent girls

Abstract

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by increased social motivation and a heightened concern of peer evaluation. However, little research has examined social influences on neural functioning in adolescence. One psychophysiological measure of motivation, the error-related negativity (ERN), is an ERP following an error. In adults, the ERN is enhanced by contextual factors that influence motivation, such as social observation and evaluation. The current study examined relations among age and neural responses in social contexts in adolescence. Seventy-six adolescent girls (9-17 years old) completed a flanker task under two different conditions. In the social condition, adolescent girls were informed that two other adolescents would be observing and providing feedback about their performance. In the nonsocial condition, adolescent girls completed a flanker task alone and were told feedback was computer generated. Results revealed that younger adolescents exhibited a larger ERN in social contexts than nonsocial contexts. In contrast, there were no differences in the ERN between contexts among older adolescents. In addition, enhancements of the ERN in social contexts among younger adolescents diminished the relation between the ERN and age. These findings suggest that the ERN is sensitive to social contexts in early adolescence, and developmental changes in the ERN may be partially explained by contextual factors that influence motivation.

Keywords: ERPs; adolescents; development; error processing; social factors.

Figure 1

Experimental paradigm. Adolescents received 10 feedback breaks (e.g., after each block of 32 trials) for each the social and nonsocial condition. A) Depiction of trial sequence for the flanker task in the nonsocial condition. Adolescents were told that they would receive computer-based feedback. Feedback that adolescents received was dependent on accuracy on the prior block. B) Depiction of the flanker task in the social condition. Adolescents were told that two other adolescents would be observing and monitoring their performance (i.e., accuracy, response times) during the flanker task. Like the nonsocial condition, feedback that adolescents received in the social condition was dependent on accuracy on the previous block.

Figure 2

A) Response-locked event-related potential (ERP) waveforms for correct and error responses in the nonsocial condition and social condition. The top row is the fronto-central electrode grouping where the ERN was maximal. The bottom row is the centro-parietal electrode grouping, where Pe was maximal. B) Topographic plots of the ΔERN 20 ms post-response (top) and ΔPe 250 ms post-response (bottom).

Figure 3

Waveforms for the ERN among older adolescents (right) and younger adolescents (left) for the nonsocial condition (grey) and social condition (black). The ERN was significantly larger in the social condition as compared to the nonsocial condition for younger adolescents, p < .001, but not for older adolescents, p > .20.

Figure 4

Scatterplot depicting the relation between the ERN in the nonsocial condition (black circles, black line) and the ERN in the social condition (grey squares, grey line) with age. The relation between the nonsocial ERN and age reached significance, p = .005. In contrast, the ERN in the social condition was unrelated to age, p = .88.