Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, 3942 Campus Dr, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2021 Dec;21(6):1262-1275. doi: 10.3758/s13415-021-00916-7. Epub 2021 Jun 5.
Adverse peer experiences, such as social exclusion, are known risks for socioemotional problems among shy youth. Yet, little is known about how shy children and adolescents process social exclusion in the brain and whether these responses are amplified in adolescence. Using the Cyberball task, we examined mediofrontal theta (4-7 Hz) event-related EEG spectral power during conditions of fair play and social exclusion in 122 participants (58 children, ages 10-12 years, and 64 adolescents, ages 14-17 years). Age effects of the task showed that adolescents displayed heightened theta power to both outright rejection and baseline "not my turn" events, whereas children showed higher theta power to rejection compared with "not my turn" events. Further results on individual differences showed that children with relatively higher levels of shyness displayed enhanced theta power to both rejection and "not my turn" events-a pattern that also was observed in adolescents. These findings suggest that a pattern of heightened neural sensitivity to both outright social exclusion and threats of exclusion, which is the norm by adolescence, also is observed in children with higher levels of shyness. The similar neural response pattern might be driven by salient social motivations that similarly modify the social cognition and behaviors of these groups and might reflect neural antecedents of rejection sensitivity.
不良同伴经历，如社会排斥，是害羞青少年出现社会情绪问题的已知风险。然而，人们对害羞的儿童和青少年在大脑中如何处理社会排斥知之甚少，也不知道这些反应是否会在青春期加剧。我们使用 Cyberball 任务，在公平游戏和社会排斥条件下，对 122 名参与者（58 名儿童，年龄 10-12 岁，64 名青少年，年龄 14-17 岁）的中前额 theta（4-7Hz）事件相关 EEG 光谱功率进行了研究。任务的年龄效应表明，青少年对直接拒绝和基线“不是我的回合”事件表现出更高的 theta 功率，而儿童对拒绝的 theta 功率高于“不是我的回合”事件。关于个体差异的进一步结果表明，相对害羞程度较高的儿童对拒绝和“不是我的回合”事件表现出更高的 theta 功率，这种模式在青少年中也有观察到。这些发现表明，一种对直接社会排斥和排斥威胁都高度敏感的神经模式，在青春期是正常的，也存在于相对害羞程度较高的儿童中。类似的神经反应模式可能是由突出的社会动机驱动的，这些动机同样改变了这些群体的社会认知和行为，可能反映了拒绝敏感性的神经前因。
