Age-Related Changes in Emotional Face Processing Across Childhood and Into Young Adulthood: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

作者：MacNamara Annmarie^*; Verges Alvaro; Kujawa Autumn; Fitzgerald Kate D; Monk Christopher S; Phan K Luan

来源：Developmental Psychobiology, 2016, 58(1): 27-38.

DOI：10.1002/dev.21341

• late positive potential
• LPP
• development
• faces
• emotion
• affect
• P1
• event-related potential
• ERP
• children
• neural
• adolescent

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.

• 出版日期2016-1