Age-related changes in emotional face processing across childhood and into young adulthood: Evidence from event-related potentials. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 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.

published proceedings

  • Dev Psychobiol

altmetric score

  • 1

author list (cited authors)

  • MacNamara, A., Vergs, A., Kujawa, A., Fitzgerald, K. D., Monk, C. S., & Phan, K. L.

citation count

  • 41

complete list of authors

  • MacNamara, Annmarie||Vergés, Alvaro||Kujawa, Autumn||Fitzgerald, Kate D||Monk, Christopher S||Phan, K Luan

publication date

  • January 2016

publisher