Longitudinal changes in social brain development: processing outcomes for friend and self

Pathways through Adolescenc

Development of response inhibition in the context of relevant versus irrelevant emotions

Pathways through Adolescenc

Increased striatal activity in adolescence benefits learning

Pathways through Adolescenc

Prosocial development in adolescence

In this review, we describe the development of prosocial behavior in adolescence as a critical inflection period for social adjustment. Experimental research using prosocial giving tasks demonstrates that adolescents differentiate more be-tween recipients and contexts, suggesting increasing ingroup-outgroup differentiation during adolescence. We also demonstrate that social brain development during adolescence is partly driven by environmental influences, further underlining adolescence as a critical period for social development. The COVID-19 pandemic has had and will have long-term effects on the current generation of adolescents, for which we describe both the risks, resilience factors, and opportunities for engaging in prosocial acts of kindness.Pathways through Adolescenc

Development of Multifaceted Risk Taking and the Relations to Sex Steroid Hormones: A Longitudinal Study

Risk taking is a multidimensional construct. It is currently unclear which aspects of risk‐taking change most during adolescence and if/how sex hormones contribute to risk‐taking tendencies. This study applied a longitudinal design with three time‐points, separated by 2 years, in participants aged 8–29 years (670 observations). The Balloon Analogue Risk Task, a delay discounting task, and various self‐report questionnaires were administered, to measure aspects of risk taking. Longitudinal analyses demonstrated mostly nonlinear age‐related patterns in risk‐taking behavior and approach‐related personality characteristics (peaking in late adolescence). Increased testosterone and estradiol were found to increase risk‐taking behavior and impulsive personality, but decrease avoidance‐like personality. This study demonstrates that risk taking is most pronounced in mid‐to‐late adolescence and suggests that sex hormones accelerate this maturational process.Article / Letter to editorInstituut PsychologieInstituut Pedagogische Wetenschappe

Acting on social exclusion: neural correlates of punishment and forgiveness of excluders

This functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neural correlates of punishment and forgiveness of initiators of social exclusion (i.e. ‘excluders’). Participants divided money in a modified Dictator Game between themselves and people who previously either included or excluded them during a virtual ball-tossing game (Cyberball). Participants selectively punished the excluders by decreasing their outcomes; even when this required participants to give up monetary rewards. Punishment of excluders was associated with increased activation in the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and bilateral anterior insula. Costly punishment was accompanied by higher activity in the pre-SMA compared with punishment that resulted in gains or was non-costly. Refraining from punishment (i.e. forgiveness) was associated with self-reported perspective-taking and increased activation in the bilateral temporoparietal junction, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These findings show that social exclusion can result in punishment as well as forgiveness of excluders and that separable neural networks implicated in social cognition and cognitive control are recruited when people choose either to punish or to forgive those who excluded them.Pathways through Adolescenc

Sharing and giving across adolescence: An experimental study examining the development of prosocial behavior

In this study we use economic exchange games to examine the development of prosocial behavior in the form of sharing and giving in social interactions with peers across adolescence. Participants from four age groups (9-, 12-, 15-, and 18-year-olds, total N = 119) played three types of distribution games and the Trust game with four different interaction partners: friends, antagonists, neutral classmates, and anonymous peers. Nine- and 12-year-olds showed similar levels of prosocial behavior to all interaction partners, whereas older adolescents showed increasing differentiation in prosocial behavior depending on the relation with peers, with most prosocial behavior toward friends. The age related increase in non-costly prosocial behavior toward friends was mediated by self-reported perspective-taking skills. Current findings extend existing evidence on the developmental patterns of fairness considerations from childhood into late adolescence. Together, we show that adolescents are increasingly better at incorporating social context into decision-making. Our findings further highlight the role of friendships as a significant social context for the development of prosocial behavior in early adolescence.Pathways through Adolescenc

Medial prefrontal cortical thinning mediates shifts in other-regarding preferences during adolescence

Pathways through Adolescenc

Heritability of neural reactions to social exclusion and prosocial compensation in middle childhood

Experiencing and observing social exclusion and inclusion, as well as prosocial behavior, are important aspects of social relationships in childhood. However, it is currently unknown to what extent these processes and their neural correlates differ in heritability. We investigated influences of genetics and environment on experiencing social exclusion and compensating for social exclusion of others with the Prosocial Cyberball Game using fMRI in a twin sample (aged 7–9; N = 500). Neuroimaging analyses (N = 283) revealed that experiencing possible sel