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)

摘要： 青春期被喻为“狂风骤雨期”，青少年可能比年幼的儿童和年长的成年人有更大的情绪抑制和控制的需求。情绪抑制控制能力与冒险行为、异常的心理和行为发展有关。本研究采用事件相关电位（ERP）方法探讨青少年与成人之间的情绪冲突控制的差异。31名早期青少年（男生19名；M年龄=12.66岁）和33名成年人（男生16名；M年龄=20.15岁）完成了面孔-词Stroop任务。在该任务中，情绪词叠加在情绪面孔上构成一致和不一致条件，被试被要求判断面孔的效价（面孔任务）或词语的效价（词语任务）。分析两组被试在行为表现和与情绪信息加工相关的ERP成分上的年龄差异。结果表明：（1）青少年在面孔判断任务中存在Stroop效应（一致性条件下的反应时间比不一致条件下的反应时间短），而对于成年人而言，在面孔和词语判断任务中均发现了Stroop效应；（2）在青少年中，不一致条件诱发的N450波幅显著大于一致条件；（3）N450成分的Stroop效应仅在词语判断任务中出现，而SP成分的Stroop效应仅在面孔判断任务中出现。研究结果提供了神经证据表明，与成人相比，青少年处理情绪冲突的能力较差，这可能与其情绪控制相关的前额叶皮质不成熟有关。并且，情绪冲突控制是由冲突监测和冲突解决两个加工过程构成的，前者认知和神经资源的积累会对后者产生影响。

关键词: 情绪冲突控制, Stroop效应, 青少年, 事件相关电位