Review ArticleSocial brain development and the affective consequences of ostracism in adolescence
Introduction
Human adolescence is a period of physical, psychological and social transition between childhood and adulthood (Spear, 2000). In recent years it has been established that substantial neural development also occurs during this period of life (see Paus, 2005 for a review; Gogtay & Thompson, 2010; Paus, this issue; Giedd and Lenroot, 2010, Schmithorst, 2010). There are significant changes in grey matter and white matter volumes in brain regions responsible for complex human behaviours, notably the prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal regions (Giedd et al., 1999, Gogtay et al., 2004, Shaw et al., 2008, Sowell et al., 1999). These regions are involved in a variety of cognitive functions, including social cognition, mentalising (the attribution of mental states to oneself and to other people) and self-related processing. In this paper, we review developmental functional imaging studies of social cognition, mentalising and self-processing, and discuss recent models of adolescent neurocognitive development. We then describe a behavioural study that investigated affective reactions to an instance of experimentally induced ostracism in adolescents, compared with adults. Finally, we evaluate how the results of our study can inform models of adolescent development.
Section snippets
The social brain
The social brain is defined as the network of brain regions subserving social cognition, i.e. those enabling us to recognise others, and to evaluate our own and others’ mental states (intentions, desires and beliefs), feelings, enduring dispositions and actions (Brothers, 1990, Frith and Frith, 2007). Many different brain regions are involved in social cognition, including medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), inferior frontal gyrus, posterior superior temporal
Models of adolescent social neurocognitive development
Recently, several cognitive models have been proposed to account for behaviour associated with neurocognitive development during adolescence. These focus on the links between the development of executive functions (enabling flexible behaviour in pursuit of a goal) and aspects of social cognition such as affect regulation, with a view to explaining adolescent behavioural phenomena such as risk-taking in the presence of peers. These models have yet to incorporate explicitly the development of
Ostracism in adolescence
As peer relationships become more important in adolescence, the potential negative consequences of rejection or victimisation by peers increase. For example, Crick et al. (1999) have studied the effects of relational aggression (aggression based on damage, or the threat of damage, to interpersonal relationships) on children and adolescents. Often this takes the form of socially excluding the victim using the ‘silent treatment’, or by spreading rumours about the victim. Being a victim of
Participants
The study included 77 female participants divided into three groups: young adolescents (YA) (N = 26, age range: 11.9–13.9, mean = 12.8, SD = .59); mid-adolescents (MA) (N = 25, age range: 14.0–15.8, mean = 15.0, SD = .53), and adult (N = 26, age range: 22.2–47.1, mean = 27.4, SD = 6.2). Participants were asked to complete an adapted version of a developmental questionnaire (Carskadon & Acebo, 1993). Only 61% of participants returned their questionnaires; therefore Tanner stage data were used to confirm a developmental
Results
Data from one adult were excluded from state anxiety analyses, because she did not complete the measure after all three conditions. Data were analysed using mixed model ANOVAs, with Age (YA, MA, adult) as the between-subjects factor, and Condition (either (baseline, inclusion and ostracism) or (inclusion and ostracism) as appropriate) as the within-subjects factor. Corrections for multiple comparisons were made using Bonferroni corrections, and Greenhouse Geisser corrections were used to
Discussion
This study used an experimental ostracism manipulation (Cyberball) to investigate the hypothesis that adolescents are hypersensitive to peer rejection. On some measures, affective reactions to ostracism were greater in adolescents than in adults. We found evidence for significantly lowered overall mood after ostracism in both YA and MA groups, and significantly higher state anxiety in the YA group, but no differences between conditions on either measure for adults. In contrast, each of
Conclusions
We began this article by summarising recent work that has explored the link between social cognition and functional brain development during adolescence. This work suggests that many aspects of social cognition and their neural substrates, including face processing, social emotion processing and mentalising, are still developing during the second decade of life. These findings are compatible with neurocognitive models of adolescence, and also make specific predictions about adolescent
References (109)
- et al.
Salivary cortisol in response to acute social rejection and acceptance by peers
Biological Psychology
(2007) - et al.
A PET investigation of the attribution of intentions with a nonverbal task
Neuroimage
(2000) - et al.
A self-administered rating scale for pubertal development
Journal of Adolescent Health Care
(1993) - et al.
Movement and mind: A functional imaging study of perception and interpretation of complex intentional movement patterns
Neuroimage
(2000) - et al.
Development and natural history of mood disorders
Biological Psychiatry
(2002) - et al.
The emergence of depression in adolescence: Development of the prefrontal cortex and the representation of reward
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
(2008) - et al.
Thinking about intentions
Neuroimage
(2005) - et al.
Understanding genetic risk for aggression: Clues from the brain’s response to social exclusion
Biological Psychiatry
(2007) - et al.
Other minds in the brain: A functional imaging study of “theory of mind” in story comprehension
Cognition
(1995) - et al.
Social cognition in humans
Current Biology
(2007)
Reading the mind in cartoons and stories: An fMRI study of ‘theory of mind’ in verbal and nonverbal tasks
Neuropsychologia
Biological substrates of emotional reactivity and regulation in adolescence during an emotional go-nogo task
Biological Psychiatry
Human neural systems for face recognition and social communication
Biological Psychiatry
Limits on theory of mind use in adults
Cognition
Love is all you need? Focusing on adolescents’ life concerns from an ecological point of view
Journal of Adolescence
Neural circuitry underlying voluntary suppression of sadness
Biological Psychiatry
Neural basis of emotional self-regulation in childhood
Neuroscience
A developmental examination of gender differences in brain engagement during evaluation of threat
Biological Psychiatry
Cognitive efficiency on a match to sample task decreases at the onset of puberty in children
Brain and Cognition
Adolescent immaturity in attention-related brain engagement to emotional facial expressions
Neuroimage
The cognitive control of emotion
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
The role of social cognition in emotion
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Mapping brain maturation and cognitive development during adolescence
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
People thinking about thinking people. The role of the temporo-parietal junction in “theory of mind”
Neuroimage
A region of right posterior superior temporal sulcus responds to observed intentional actions
Neuropsychologia
Development of the self-concept during adolescence
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Localizing age-related changes in brain structure between childhood and adolescence using statistical parametric mapping
Neuroimage
The adolescent brain and age-related behavioral manifestations
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Cognitive and affective development in adolescence
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk-taking
Developmental Review
Sex differences in stress responses: Social rejection versus achievement stress
Biological Psychiatry
Evidence for dopamine receptor pruning between adolescence and adulthood in striatum but not nucleus accumbens
Brain Research: Developmental Brain Research
Amygdala response to facial expressions in children and adults
Biological Psychiatry
Meeting of minds: The medial frontal cortex and social cognition
Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Dopamine receptor pruning in prefrontal cortex during the periadolescent period in rats
Synapse
Puberty and depression: The roles of age, pubertal status and pubertal timing
Psychological Medicine
The social brain in adolescence
Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Adolescent development of the neural circuitry for thinking about intentions
Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
The social brain: A project for integrating primate behavior and neurophysiology in a new domain
Concepts in Neuroscience
Adolescents’ relationships with peers
Development during adolescence of the neural processing of social emotion
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Growth and aggression: I. Childhood to early adolescence
Developmental Psychology
The adolescent brain
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Regulation of neural oxytocin gene expression by gonadal steroids in pubertal rats
Molecular Endocrinology
Relationships in adolescence
Relational and physical victimization within friendships: Nobody told me there’s be friends like these
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology
Childhood aggression and gender: A new look at an old problem
The ecology of adolescent activity and experience
Journal of Youth and Adolescence
Self-understanding in childhood and adolescence
The intentional stance
Cited by (339)
Compensatory prosocial behavior in high-risk adolescents observing social exclusion: The effects of emotion feedback
2024, Journal of Experimental Child PsychologyAdolescents’ neural sensitivity to high and low popularity: Longitudinal links to risk-taking and prosocial behavior
2023, Developmental Cognitive NeuroscienceAcute neural effects of fluoxetine on emotional regulation in depressed adolescents
2023, Psychological MedicinePeer factors and prosocial behavior among Chinese adolescents from difficult families
2024, Scientific Reports