Adolescents’ Affective and Neural Responses to Parental Social Feedback: Influences of Self-Views and Parental Perceptions

• In Event: Neural Processes of Parent-Child Bonding: Individual Differences and Parent-Child Concordance.

Abstract

Adolescence represents a period of social and emotional turmoil, in which interpersonal sensitivity is typically exacerbated. Interactions with and feedback from significant others, especially parents, generally help adolescents to foster a stable self-image. Nonetheless, receiving parental social feedback, i.e. criticism and praise, may differentially shape adolescents’ feelings and neural responses, also depending on the consistency of feedback with already existing self-views.

In this study, we aim to examine whether adolescents’ mood is affected by receiving parental positive, negative and intermediate social feedback and to elucidate the neural signatures of receiving parental feedback. A second aim is to examine if (in)consistency of feedback with adolescents’ own self-views has an effect on adolescents’ affective and neural responses. Third, we will explore whether individual differences in adolescents’ global self-views and parents’ global perception of the child have an effect on these affective and neural responses.

As part of a two-generation study on adolescent depression and parent-adolescent interactions (RE-PAIR), non-clinical adolescents (n = 63; 40 girls, 23 boys; Mage = 16.2, SDage = 1.19 years) received (fake) parental feedback in the form of 15 positive, 15 intermediate, and 15 negative personality characteristics while in the scanner. Adolescents were told that their parent selected these words from a list as most descriptive for their child. After each feedback word, adolescents indicated their mood. Additionally, both adolescents and their parents rated these feedback words in terms of valence and applicability to the adolescent, in order to assess (global) self-views.

We hypothesize that parental praise (i.e., positive feedback), compared to relatively neutral (i.e., intermediate) feedback and criticism (i.e., negative feedback), will be associated with increases in adolescents’ mood and increased activity in reward/self-referential processing related regions, i.e. ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, whereas negative feedback will be associated with decreases in mood and increased activity in regions related to social rejection, i.e. anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula. We furthermore expect that brain regions important for mentalizing (e.g. dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, temporoparietal junction) will be activated both in response to positive and negative feedback compared to intermediate feedback. Lastly, the moderating role of adolescents’ (global) self-views as well as parents’ global perception of their child will be explored.

Authors

• Lisanne van Houtum, Universiteit Leiden
  Presenting Author

• Mirjam Wever, Leiden University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Loes Janssen, Universiteit Leiden
  Non-Presenting Author

• Charlotte C van Schie, Leiden University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Geert-Jan Will, Leiden University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marieke Tollenaar, Leiden University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bernet Elzinga, Leiden University
  Non-Presenting Author