van Rooijen Rianne, Junge Caroline M M, Kemner Chantal
Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2018 Feb 13;9:127. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00127. eCollection 2018.
During puberty a dip in face recognition is often observed, possibly caused by heightened levels of gonadal hormones which in turn affects the re-organization of relevant cortical circuitry. In the current study we investigated whether a pubertal dip could be observed in three other abilities related to social information processing: gaze following, emotion recognition from the eyes, and empathizing abilities. Across these abilities we further explored whether these measurements revealed sex differences as another way to understand how gonadal hormones affect processing of social information. Results show that across adolescence, there are improvements in emotion recognition from the eyes and in empathizing abilities. These improvements did not show a dip, but are more plateau-like. The gaze cueing effect did not change over adolescence. We only observed sex differences in empathizing abilities, with girls showing higher scores than boys. Based on these results it appears that gonadal hormones are not exerting a unified influence on higher levels of social information processing. Further research should also explore changes in (visual) information processing around puberty onset to find a more fitted explanation for changes in social behavior across adolescence.
在青春期，人们经常观察到面部识别能力下降，这可能是由于性腺激素水平升高所致，而性腺激素水平升高反过来又会影响相关皮质回路的重组。在本研究中，我们调查了在与社会信息处理相关的其他三种能力中是否也能观察到青春期下降现象：目光追随、从眼睛识别情绪以及共情能力。在这些能力方面，我们进一步探讨这些测量结果是否揭示了性别差异，以此作为理解性腺激素如何影响社会信息处理的另一种方式。结果表明，在整个青春期，从眼睛识别情绪的能力和共情能力都有所提高。这些提高并未出现下降，而是更呈平稳状态。目光提示效应在青春期没有变化。我们仅在共情能力方面观察到性别差异，女孩的得分高于男孩。基于这些结果，看来性腺激素并未对更高层次的社会信息处理产生统一影响。进一步的研究还应探索青春期开始前后（视觉）信息处理的变化，以便为整个青春期社会行为的变化找到更合适的解释。
