Age-related Differences in Emotional Conflict Control between Adolescents and Adults: A Behavioral and ERP Study

lin -zhang

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (2) : 307-319.

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PDF(1190 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (2) : 307-319.

Age-related Differences in Emotional Conflict Control between Adolescents and Adults: A Behavioral and ERP Study

  • Yang Meng1,2, Zhang Lin1,3, Deng Xinmei1,3, Zeng Shuling4
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Abstract

Described as a "stormy period", adolescents may have a greater need for emotional inhibition and control than younger children and older adults. The ability of emotion control is associated with risk-taking behavior, abnormal psychological and behavioral development, and is crucial for adolescents. Previous researches suggested that there may be an undifferentiated and inefficient manner in which adolescents recruited the process of cognitive control and conflict detection. Thus, emotional information processing and emotional control during this special and critical period must be better understood. The first objective of the present study was to investigate differences in emotional conflict control between adolescents and adults. The event-related potential (ERP) was used to examine the differences in emotional conflict control between adolescents and adults. The second objective was to examine individual performance in the face-judging task and word-judging task. 31 early adolescents (12 females; Mage=12.66 years old) and 33 adults (17 females; Mage =20.15 years old) completed the face-word Stroop task. In this task, emotional words were overlaid on the emotional faces to generate congruent conditions (CC) and incongruent conditions (IC), and participants were asked to judge the valence of faces (face-judging task) or words (word-judging task). The participants' electroencephalography (EEG) signals were recorded during the whole task. Age differences in behavioral performance and ERP components related to emotional information processing between the two groups were analyzed. The results showed that: (1) Stroop effect was found in adolescents in the face-judging task (the response time was shorter in the congruent conditions than in the incongruent conditions), but for adults, the Stroop effect was found in both face and word judging task; (2) In adolescents, the N450 amplitude induced by incongruent conditions was significantly larger than that induced by congruent conditions; (3) The Stroop effect of N450 only appeared in the word judging task, while the Stroop effect of SP only appeared in the face judging task. The behavioral results might because of the worse conflict detection and resolution of adolescents, and the effort (RT) expended for the congruent stimuli is equivalent to that for the incongruent stimuli. The results of N450 might indicate that adolescents devote more cognitive and neural resources than adults to detecting conflict. These results provide neurological evidence that adolescents are less able to deal with emotional conflict than adults, which may be related to the immaturity of the prefrontal cortex associated with emotional control. Moreover, emotional conflict control is composed of conflict detection and conflict resolution, and  the accumulation of cognitive and neural resources in the former process may affect the latter process. Both the behavioral and neural results show that adolescents seemed to be less capable of emotional conflict control because of the immaturity of prefrontal regions. However, factors such as participants' age-related reading experience, selection and independent assessment of face stimulus materials, and control for the congruent of word and face stimuli should all be taken into account. Future research could consider conflict control of positive emotions as a study object, and examine comparative characteristics over a larger age range.

Key words

emotional conflict control / congruent effect / adolescents / event-related potentials (ERPs)

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lin -zhang. Age-related Differences in Emotional Conflict Control between Adolescents and Adults: A Behavioral and ERP Study[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2023, 46(2): 307-319
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