Zhou Xianzhen, Ghorbani Foroogh, Roessner Veit, Hommel Bernhard, Prochnow Astrid, Beste Christian
Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, TU Dresden, Schubertstrasse 42, Dresden 01307, Germany.
Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, TU Dresden, Schubertstrasse 42, Dresden 01307, Germany; German Center for Child and Adolescent Health (DZKJ), Partner site Leipzig/Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2025 Apr;72:101521. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101521. Epub 2025 Jan 30.
Event segmentation, which involves dividing continuous information into meaningful units, changes as children develop into adolescents. Adolescents tend to segment events more coarsely than adults. This study explores whether adolescents could adjust their segmentation style to resemble that of adults when provided with explicit metacontrol-related instructions. We compared event segmentation in two adolescent groups and one adult group, while simultaneously recording EEG data. One adolescent group was instructed to perform segmentation as finely as possible, whereas the other adolescent group and adults received no specific instructions on segmentation granularity. EEG data were analyzed using multivariate pattern analysis and source reconstruction. The findings revealed that adolescents given fine-grained instructions adjusted their segmentation probability closer to adult levels, although they did not fully match adults in processing multiple simultaneous changes. Neurophysiological results indicated that adolescents with fine-grained instructions exhibited neural decoding performance more similar to adults. Increased activity in the inferior frontal gyrus in these adolescents compared to adults related to this. The results suggest that adolescents with fine-grained instructions demonstrated more persistent cognitive control and enhanced top-down attention than their peers and adults. The study shows that adolescent cognitive processes can be shifted toward adult-like performance through instructions.
事件分割是指将连续的信息划分为有意义的单元，它会随着儿童成长为青少年而发生变化。与成年人相比，青少年往往会更粗略地分割事件。本研究探讨了在给予明确的与元控制相关的指导时，青少年是否能够调整他们的分割方式以使其类似于成年人。我们比较了两个青少年组和一个成年人组的事件分割情况，同时记录脑电图（EEG）数据。一个青少年组被指示尽可能精细地进行分割，而另一个青少年组和成年人则没有收到关于分割粒度的具体指示。使用多变量模式分析和源重建对脑电图数据进行了分析。研究结果显示，虽然在处理多个同时发生的变化时没有完全与成年人匹配，但接受精细粒度指示的青少年将他们的分割概率调整得更接近成年人水平。神经生理学结果表明，接受精细粒度指示的青少年表现出与成年人更相似的神经解码性能。与成年人相比，这些青少年额下回的活动增加与此有关。结果表明，与同龄人及成年人相比，接受精细粒度指示的青少年表现出更持久的认知控制和更强的自上而下的注意力。该研究表明，通过指导，青少年的认知过程可以向类似成年人的表现转变。
