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Age‐related changes in emotional face processing across childhood and into young adulthood: Evidence from event‐related potentials
Author(s) -
MacNamara Annmarie,
Vergés Alvaro,
Kujawa Autumn,
Fitzgerald Kate D.,
Monk Christopher S.,
Phan K. Luan
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.21341
Subject(s) - psychology , late childhood , developmental psychology , event related potential , young adult , face (sociological concept) , early adulthood , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , cognition , social science , sociology
Socio‐emotional processing is an essential part of development, and age‐related changes in its neural correlates can be observed. The late positive potential (LPP) is a measure of motivated attention that can be used to assess emotional processing; however, changes in the LPP elicited by emotional faces have not been assessed across a wide age range in childhood and young adulthood. We used an emotional face matching task to examine behavior and event‐related potentials (ERPs) in 33 youth aged 7–19 years old. Younger children were slower when performing the matching task. The LPP elicited by emotional faces but not control stimuli (geometric shapes) decreased with age; by contrast, an earlier ERP (the P1) decreased with age for both faces and shapes, suggesting increased efficiency of early visual processing. Results indicate age‐related attenuation in emotional processing that may stem from greater efficiency and regulatory control when performing a socio‐emotional task. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc . Dev Psychobiol 58:27–38, 2016.