Probing the Neural Correlates of Anticipated Peer Evaluation in Adolescence

Neural correlates of social cognition were assessed in 9-to-17-year-olds using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants appraised how unfamiliar peers they had previously identified as being of high or low interest would evaluate them for an anticipated online chat session. Differential age- and sex-related activation patterns emerged in several regions previously implicated in affective processing. These included the ventral striatum, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and insula. In general, activation patterns shifted with age in older relative to younger females, but showed no association with age in males. Relating these neural response patterns to changes in adolescent social-cognition enriches theories of adolescent social development through enhanced neurobiological understanding of social behavior

Amygdala and Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Function during Anticipated Peer Evaluation in Pediatric Social Anxiety

1. Context. Amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex dysfunction manifests in adolescents with anxiety disorders when they view negatively-valenced stimuli in threatening contexts. Such fear-circuitry dysfunction may also manifest when anticipated social evaluation leads socially anxious adolescents to misperceive peers as threatening. 2. Objective. To determine whether photographs of negatively-evaluated smiling peers, viewed during anticipated evaluation, engage the amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex differentially in adolescents with and without social anxiety. 3. Design. Case-control study. 4. Setting. Government clinical research institute. 5. Participants. Fourteen adolescents with anxiety disorders associated with marked social concerns and 14 diagnosis-free adolescents, matched on sex, age, IQ, and socio-economic status. 6. Main Outcome Measure(s). Blood oxygenation level-dependent signal measured with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Before and during neuroimaging scans, participants anticipating social evaluation completed peer- and self-appraisals. Event-related analyses were tailored to participants’ ratings of specific peers. 7. Results. Participants classified 40 pictures of same-age peers as ones they wanted to engage or not engage with for a social interaction. Anxious adolescents showed greater amygdala activation than healthy adolescents when anticipating evaluation from peers rated as undesired for an interaction. Viewing undesired peers engaged stronger positive amygdala-ventrolateral-prefrontal-cortex connectivity in anxious vs. healthy adolescents. 8. Conclusions. Anticipating social evaluation from negatively-perceived peers modulates amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex engagement differentially in anxious and healthy 3 adolescents. Amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex abnormalities in adolescent anxiety disorders are heightened in specific contexts of potential peer evaluation

Evidence-based assessment and intervention for anxiety in school psychology

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