Development during Adolescence of the Neural Processing of Social Emotion

In this fMRI study, we investigated the development between adolescence and adulthood of the neural processing of social emotions. Unlike basic emotions (such as disgust and fear), social emotions (such as guilt and embarrassment) require the representation of another's mental states. Nineteen adolescents (10–18 years) and 10 adults (22–32 years) were scanned while thinking about scenarios featuring either social or basic emotions. In both age groups, the anterior rostral medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) was activated during social versus basic emotion. However, adolescents activated a lateral part of the MPFC for social versus basic emotions, whereas adults did not. Relative to adolescents, adults showed higher activity in the left temporal pole for social versus basic emotions. These results show that, although the MPFC is activated during social emotion in both adults and adolescents, adolescents recruit anterior (MPFC) regions more than do adults, and adults recruit posterior (temporal) regions more than do adolescents.

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Labelling Facial Affect in Context in Adults with and without TBI

Brain Impairment ◽

10.1017/brimp.2016.29 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 49-61 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Lyn S. Turkstra ◽

Sarah G. Kraning ◽

Sarah K. Riedeman ◽

Bilge Mutlu ◽

Melissa Duff ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Undergraduate Students ◽

Facial Affect ◽

Affect Recognition ◽

Cognitive State ◽

Basic Emotion ◽

Social Emotions ◽

Basic Emotions ◽

Emotion Words ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Choice Tests

Recognition of facial affect has been studied extensively in adults with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI), mostly by asking examinees to match basic emotion words to isolated faces. This method may not capture affect labelling in everyday life when faces are in context and choices are open-ended. To examine effects of context and response format, we asked 148 undergraduate students to label emotions shown on faces either in isolation or in natural visual scenes. Responses were categorised as representing basic emotions, social emotions, cognitive state terms, or appraisals. We used students’ responses to create a scoring system that was applied prospectively to five men with TBI. In both groups, over 50% of responses were neither basic emotion words nor synonyms, and there was no significant difference in response types between faces alone vs. in scenes. Adults with TBI used labels not seen in students’ responses, talked more overall, and often gave multiple labels for one photo. Results suggest benefits of moving beyond forced-choice tests of faces in isolation to fully characterise affect recognition in adults with and without TBI.

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Neural processing of cold-induced pain relief in heat allodynia (fMRI study)

Aktuelle Neurologie ◽

10.1055/s-2007-987529 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 34 (S 2) ◽

Author(s):

C Mohr ◽

I Mangels ◽

C Helmchen

Keyword(s):

Pain Relief ◽

Neural Processing ◽

Fmri Study

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Sources of cognitive conflict and their relevance to Theory of Mind proficiency in healthy ageing. A preregistered study.

10.31234/osf.io/mzv5u ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Foyzul Rahman ◽

Sabrina Javed ◽

Ian Apperly ◽

Peter Hansen ◽

Carol Holland ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Theory Of Mind ◽

Executive Control ◽

Spatial Working Memory ◽

Age Groups ◽

Response Speed ◽

Cognitive Conflict ◽

Mental States ◽

Younger Adults ◽

Age Related ◽

Outcome Knowledge

Age-related decline in Theory of Mind (ToM) may be due to waning executive control, which is necessary for resolving conflict when reasoning about others’ mental states. We assessed how older (OA; n=50) versus younger adults (YA; n=50) were affected by three theoretically relevant sources of conflict within ToM: competing Self-Other perspectives; competing cued locations and outcome knowledge. We examined which best accounted for age-related difficulty with ToM. Our data show unexpected similarity between age groups when representing a belief incongruent with one’s own. Individual differences in attention and motor response speed best explained the degree of conflict experienced through conflicting Self-Other perspectives. However, OAs were disproportionately affected by managing conflict between cued locations. Age and spatial working memory were most relevant for predicting the magnitude of conflict elicited by conflicting cued locations. We suggest that previous studies may have underestimated OA’s ToM proficiency by including unnecessary conflict in ToM tasks.

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Differential neural processing of social exclusion in adolescents with non-suicidal self-injury: An fMRI study

Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging ◽

10.1016/j.pscychresns.2016.08.001 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 255 ◽

pp. 43-49 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Rebecca C. Groschwitz ◽

Paul L. Plener ◽

Georg Groen ◽

Martina Bonenberger ◽

Birgit Abler

Keyword(s):

Social Exclusion ◽

Neural Processing ◽

Self Injury ◽

Fmri Study

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Typical emotional expression in children’s drawings of the human face

Current Psychology ◽

10.1007/s12144-021-01558-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Eleonora Cannoni ◽

Giuliana Pinto ◽

Anna Silvia Bombi

Keyword(s):

Emotional Expression ◽

Visual Cues ◽

Age Groups ◽

Emotional Expressions ◽

Basic Emotions ◽

Preferential Expression ◽

Human Figure ◽

Figure Drawings ◽

Number Of Faces ◽

Human Faces

AbstractThis study was aimed at verifying if children introduce emotional expressions in their drawings of human faces, and if a preferential expression exists; we also wanted to verify if children’s pictorial choices change with increasing age. To this end we examined the human figure drawings made by 160 boys and 160 girls, equally divided in 4 age groups: 6–7; 8–9; 10–11; 12–13 years; mean ages (SD in parentheses) were: 83,30 (6,54); 106,14 (7,16) 130,49 (8,26); 155,40 (6,66). Drawings were collected with the Draw-a-Man test instructions, i.e. without mentioning an emotional characterization. In the light of data from previous studies of emotion drawing on request, and the literature about preferred emotional expressions, we expected that an emotion would be portrayed even by the younger participants, and that the preferred emotion would be happiness. We also expected that with the improving ability to keep into account both mouth and eyes appearance, other expressions would be found besides the smiling face. Data were submitted to non-parametric tests to compare the frequencies of expressions (absolute and by age) and the frequencies of visual cues (absolute and by age and expressions). The results confirmed that only a small number of faces were expressionless, and that the most frequent emotion was happiness. However, with increasing age this representation gave way to a variety of basic emotions (sadness, fear, anger, surprise), whose representation may depend from the ability to modify the shapes of both eyes and mouth and changing communicative aims of the child.

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Functional anatomy and differential time courses of neural processing for explicit, inferred, and illusory contoursAn event-related fMRI study

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/s1053-8119(03)00180-0 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 1567-1577 ◽

Cited By ~ 35

Author(s):

Afra Ritzl ◽

John C Marshall ◽

Peter H Weiss ◽

Oliver Zafiris ◽

Nadim J Shah ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Functional Anatomy ◽

Neural Processing ◽

Fmri Study ◽

Time Courses

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Cognitive and affective Theory of Mind in adolescence: developmental aspects and associated neuropsychological variables

Psychological Research ◽

10.1007/s00426-019-01263-6 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Edith Theresa Gabriel ◽

Raphaela Oberger ◽

Michaela Schmoeger ◽

Matthias Deckert ◽

Stefanie Vockh ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Theory Of Mind ◽

Language Comprehension ◽

Age Groups ◽

Mental States ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Late Adolescents ◽

Affective Processes ◽

Neuropsychological Tasks ◽

Neuropsychological Variables

Abstract Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to represent and attribute mental states to oneself and others. So far, research regarding ToM processing across adolescence is scarce. Existing studies either yield inconsistent results or did not or not thoroughly investigate aspects like higher order ToM and associated neuropsychological variables which the current study tried to address. 643 typically developing early, middle, and late adolescents (age groups 13–14; 15–16; 17–18) performed cognitive and affective ToM tasks as well as neuropsychological tasks tapping the cognitive or affective domain. Regarding both ToM types, 15- to 16-year-olds and 17- to 18-year-olds outperformed 13- to 14-year-olds, whereas females were superior regarding cognitive ToM. Across adolescence, cognitive and affective ToM correlated with attention and affective intelligence, whereas working memory, language comprehension, and figural intelligence additionally correlated with cognitive ToM. In early adolescence, attention correlated with both ToM types, whereas cognitive ToM further correlated with language comprehension and affective ToM with verbal intelligence, verbal fluency, and verbal flexibility. In middle and late adolescence, affective intelligence correlated with both ToM types, whereas cognitive ToM additionally correlated with working memory, language comprehension, and figural intelligence. The current study shows a developmental step regarding cognitive and affective ToM in middle adolescence as well as gender differences in cognitive ToM processing. Associations between neuropsychological variables and ToM processing were shown across adolescence and within age groups. Results give new insights into social cognition in adolescence and are well supported by neuroscientific and neurobiological studies regarding ToM and the integration of cognitive and affective processes. Graphic abstract

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Ur-Emotions and Your Emotions: Reconceptualizing Basic Emotion

Emotion Review ◽

10.1177/1754073909345547 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 14-21 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

W. Gerrod Parrott

Keyword(s):

Emotional State ◽

Textual Criticism ◽

Underlying Structure ◽

Basic Emotion ◽

Basic Emotions

The term ur-emotion is proposed to replace basic emotion as a name for the aspects of emotion that underlie perceived similarities of emotion types across cultures and species. The ur- prefix is borrowed from the German on analogy to similar borrowings in textual criticism and musicology. The proposed term ur-emotion is less likely to be interpreted as referring to the entirety of an emotional state than is the term basic emotion. Ur-emotion avoids reductionism by indicating an abstract underlying structure that accounts for similarities between emotions without implying that the differences are unimportant. This article is dedicated to the memory of Bob Solomon, and is framed in terms of his decades-long analysis and critique of the concept of basic emotions.

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Reading What the Mind Thinks From How the Eye Sees

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797616687364 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (4) ◽

pp. 494-503 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Daniel H. Lee ◽

Adam K. Anderson

Keyword(s):

Mental States ◽

Optical Function ◽

Emotional Information ◽

Basic Emotions ◽

Lower Face ◽

Social And Emotional ◽

The Mind ◽

Human Eyes

Human eyes convey a remarkable variety of complex social and emotional information. However, it is unknown which physical eye features convey mental states and how that came about. In the current experiments, we tested the hypothesis that the receiver’s perception of mental states is grounded in expressive eye appearance that serves an optical function for the sender. Specifically, opposing features of eye widening versus eye narrowing that regulate sensitivity versus discrimination not only conveyed their associated basic emotions (e.g., fear vs. disgust, respectively) but also conveyed opposing clusters of complex mental states that communicate sensitivity versus discrimination (e.g., awe vs. suspicion). This sensitivity-discrimination dimension accounted for the majority of variance in perceived mental states (61.7%). Further, these eye features remained diagnostic of these complex mental states even in the context of competing information from the lower face. These results demonstrate that how humans read complex mental states may be derived from a basic optical principle of how people see.

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