Age- and sex-related differences in social competence and emotion labeling in pre-adolescence

Abstract

Identification of facial expressions is important to navigate social interactions and associates with developmental outcomes. It is presumed that social competence, behavioral emotion labeling and neural emotional face processing are related, but this has rarely been studied. Here, we investigated these interrelations and their associations with age and sex, in the YOUth cohort (1055 children, 8-11 years old). Using a multistep linear modelling approach, we associated parent-reported social competence, basic emotion labeling skills based on pictures of facial expressions, and neural facial emotion processing during a passive-watching fMRI task with pictures of houses and emotional faces. Results showed better emotion labeling and higher social competence for girls compared to boys. Age was positively associated with emotion labeling skills and specific social competence subscales. These age- and sex-differences were not reflected in brain function. During fMRI, happy faces elicited more activity than neutral or fearful faces. However, we did not find evidence for the hypothesized links between social competence and behavioral emotion labeling, and with neural activity. To conclude, in pre-adolescents, social competence and emotion labeling varied with age and sex, while social competence, emotion labeling and neural processing of emotional faces were not associated with each other.

Keywords: Children; Development; Emotion processing; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Sex differences; Social competence.

Fig. 1

Venn diagram of the available data. Labels specify the data domains of interest for this study and the total number of participants with data for the domain. Colors of the labels correspond to the colors of the three circles. Area of the circles and the overlapping spheres are proportional, and numbers indicate absolute numbers of children. Figure adapted from web application DeepVenn (Hulsen, 2022).

Fig. 2

Design of fMRI task.

Fig. 3

Example of the watershed procedure. As input, we use a contrast map (in this example Faces > Houses) thresholded with p_FWE < .05 and a cluster extent threshold based on p < .001 which corresponds to a z-value of 3.1. The watershed procedure then finds local peaks and minima and creates binary masks of the segmentations. The segmentation masks can be used as regions-of-interest in subsequent analyses.

Fig. 4

Effects of age and sex on social competence subscales. Red dots indicate social competence scores for girls and blue dots indicate scores for boys. Lines show the relation modeled linearly between social competence score and age (for girls in red, boys in blue and in black for the group as whole). Peer problems and prosocial behavior are subscales from the for the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Empathic concern and perspective taking are subscales from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI).

Fig. 5

Response time on correct trials for the different emotions. Boxplot of the quartiles of the median response times on correct trials for different facial expressions of emotion. Each color represents a different facial expression stimuli. Black dots are individual data points outside the interquartile range.

Fig. 6

From task activation to subclusters and task activation without smoothing. Axial slices (left hemisphere on the left side) of the task activity (A, C and D) or the binary subcluster masks created with the watershed procedure (B) visualized using MRIcroGL. The activity for each contrast is thresholded at p_FWE < .05 and a cluster extent threshold based on p < .001 which corresponds to a z-value of 3.1. The render on the right shows a transparent overview of the activity in both hemispheres and the location of the axial slices. Activity or masks in blue are based on negative contrast maps and activity or masks in red are based on positive contrast maps. Panel A shows the task activation in the original analysis. Panel B shows the cluster segmentations after the watershed procedure. Panel C shows the task activation based on non-smoothed data. Panel D shows the task activation based on non-smoothed data in a low motion subgroup.

Fig. 7

Age and sex effects on activity during faces versus houses. An axial slice shows the location of the subcluster (left hemisphere on the left side). In the plot individual β-weights from the second-level analysis, averaged over the ROI, are plotted against age in years. The solid red lines indicate that the contrast between faces > houses (positive) increases with age as group-average higher activity in faces than houses. The solid blue line indicates a large contrast in younger children with as group-average higher activity in the faces > houses (negative) contrast. The rightest plot in the bottom row shows the significant effect of sex with a larger contrast for faces > houses (positive) in girls and no age effect in this subcluster. The dot-dash line is based on the girls only and the dashed line is based on the boys only.