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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Distinct and similar patterns of emotional development in adolescents and young adults
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Dienke J Bos
  • Michael Dreyfuss
  • Nim Tottenham
  • Todd Anthony Hare
  • Adriana Galván
  • B J Casey
  • Rebecca M Jones
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Developmental Psychobiology
Publisher Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc.
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 0012-1630
Volume 62
Number 5
Page Range 591 - 599
Date 2020
Abstract Text Adolescence is a developmental period of increased sensitivity to social emotional cues, but it is less known whether young adults demonstrate similar social emotional sensitivity. The current study tested variation in reaction times to emotional face cues during different phases of emotional development. Ex-Gaussian parameters mu, sigma, and tau were computed, in addition to mean, median and standard deviation (SD) in reaction times (RT) during an emotional go/nogo-paradigm with fearful, happy, and calm facial expressions in 377 participants, 6-30 years of age. Across development, mean RT showed slowing to fearful facial expressions relative to both calm and happy facial cues, but mu revealed that this pattern was specific to adolescence. In young adulthood, increased variability to fearful expressions relative to both happy and calm ones was captured by SD and tau. The findings that adolescents had longer response latencies to fearful faces, whereas young adults demonstrated greater response variability to fearful faces, together reflect how social emotional processing continues to evolve from adolescence into early adulthood. The findings suggest that young adulthood is also a vulnerable period for processing social emotional cues that ultimately may be important to better understand why different psychopathologies emerge in early adulthood.
Free access at PubMed ID
Digital Object Identifier 10.1002/dev.21942
PubMed ID 31802483
Other Identification Number merlin-id:19156
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Keywords Developmental biology, developmental neuroscience, behavioral neuroscience, developmental and educational psychology