Poster #17 - Thumbs-up or thumbs-down: Neural sensitivity to positive and negative social feedback in adolescent girls

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Integrative Statement

Adolescence is a period of heightened sensitivity to peer influence and social evaluation, during which the opinions of peers take on greater import and are more likely to influence behavior. Heightened reactivity in brain regions involved in social-emotional processing (e.g., anterior cingulate cortex [ACC], insula, amygdala, striatum) and social reasoning (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex [MPFC], superior temporal sulcus [STS]) may contribute to observed sensitivity to peer feedback. However, past studies of neural sensitivity to feedback have been constrained by task designs that examine reactivity to either positive or negative feedback, limiting their ability to compare effects of feedback valence. This study leverages a novel paradigm to compare neural reactivity to positive, negative, and neutral feedback in a realistic social evaluation task. Given the salience of social feedback to adolescents, particularly adolescent girls, we hypothesized that they would show heightened activation in social processing regions to valenced (positive or negative) relative to neutral social feedback. Additionally, drawing from theories regarding neural processing of social reward and punishment, we hypothesized that patterns of activation would differ as a result of feedback valence (positive vs. negative).

Thirty-eight adolescent girls (Mage = 17.06) completed a novel social feedback task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). To mimic the experience of being evaluated based on meaningful personal opinions, youth saw pairs of options from a variety of domains (e.g., school subjects, music genres) and selected which one they preferred. Next, they were told they would receive feedback indicating whether peers who previously completed the task agreed with their choice, disagreed, or were neutral (i.e., half agreed and half disagreed). In reality, feedback was randomly generated so that youth received one third positive, one third negative, and one third neutral feedback.

To compare neural reactivity to social feedback based on valence (i.e., positive, negative, or neutral), we conducted whole-brain independent samples t-tests. Our analyses focused on four primary contrasts of interest: negative relative to neutral, positive relative to neutral, negative relative to positive, and positive relative to negative feedback (Table 1). As anticipated, adolescents showed greater activation to negative than neutral feedback in regions involved in social-emotional processing and social reasoning (bilateral insula and ACC/MPFC) as well as dorsal caudate. Positive relative to neutral feedback was associated with activation in left insula. Negative relative to positive feedback was associated with activation in regions involved in social-emotional processing and social reasoning (bilateral insula and ACC/MPFC) and dorsal caudate; positive relative to negative feedback was associated with activity in regions including the striatum, a region implicated in reward processing.

These results suggest that adolescents show distinct patterns of neural reactivity to positive and negative peer evaluation. This sensitivity to evaluation may promote both prosocial and risky behaviors in the presence of peers and may make youth more susceptible to emotional distress following rejection. Examining effects of feedback valence during a realistic social interaction can improve our understanding of adolescent sensitivity to social reward and punishment and, ultimately, heightened risk for emerging psychopathology during this stage.

Authors

• Megan Davis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Haina Modi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michelle E Miernicki, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eva H. Telzer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karen Rudolph, University of Illinois
  Non-Presenting Author