Development of neural and cognitive processing of peers' nonverbal cues in adolescence

根据面部表情或语调等非语言线索理解情绪状态的能力，是成功人际互动的关键方面。解码这些暗示的能力--特别是声音中包含的那些--在十几岁的时候继续成熟。青少年尤其难以从其他青少年的声音表达中识别情感意图。因此，尽管同龄人交流的非语言信号是青少年社交体验的核心，但对青少年来说，理解这些信号可能特别困难。这项拟议的研究计划的长期愿景是阐明支持青春期同龄人解释非语言提示(情绪识别[ER])能力不断增长的社会、认知和生物机制。我们将考察青春期ER的三个潜在机制预测因素的发展变化：(1)与同龄人的社会经验(“练习效应”)，因为青少年开始花更少的时间与照顾者在一起，而更多的时间与朋友在一起；(2)相对于其他社会信号(如照顾者的信息)，对同龄人的面孔和声音的更多关注；以及(3)神经系统的持续发展，包括对显著刺激(如杏仁核、纹状体)敏感的皮质下区域和参与社会信息处理的皮质网络。到目前为止，关于年龄/青春期对这些机制的影响以及它们对青少年ER的预测作用还知之甚少。在一系列实验中，我们将在10到15岁的青少年中调查这些机制(即社会经验、对同龄人的注意偏差和对同龄人的神经反应)作为年龄和青春期的函数的变化。将使用任务、问卷和神经成像范例的组合来同时和纵向地测量结构。HQP将有机会创建和验证现有注意力和ER测量的扩展，收集和分析纵向神经成像数据，并参与研究结果的传播。绘制青春期支持ER的社会、认知和生物机制的成熟轨迹将为社会信息处理模型提供信息，该模型目前不包括对其组成部分(例如，注意、解释)的发展变化的考虑。加深我们对青少年注意力自然分配到他们的社会环境的变化方式的理解，可以指出向青少年交流信息的有效方法；例如，这一发现对设计面向青少年用户的技术具有启示意义。识别促进ER的因素也可以为支持青少年社会适应的努力提供信息--在新冠肺炎事件S扰乱青年社会生活之后，这一结果将尤为重要。

The ability to interpret emotional states from nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions or tone of voice, is a critical aspect of successful interpersonal interaction. The capacity to decode these cues-particularly those contained in the voice-continues to mature during the teenage years. Adolescents especially struggle to identify emotional intent in vocal expressions produced by other teenagers. Thus, although nonverbal signals communicated by peers are central to adolescents' social experiences, they may be particularly challenging for teenagers to interpret. The long-term vision of the proposed research program is to elucidate the social, cognitive, and biological mechanisms that support the growing capacity to interpret peers' nonverbal cues (emotion recognition [ER]) in adolescence. We will examine developmental change in three potential mechanistic predictors of ER in adolescence: (1) social experience with peers ("practice effects"), as teenagers begin to spend less time with their caregivers and more time with friends, (2) greater attentional engagement with the faces and voices of their peers over other social signals (like those of caregivers), given heightened salience of social information conveyed by friends during adolescence, and (3) ongoing development of neural systems, including subcortical regions that are sensitive to salient stimuli (e.g., amygdala, striatum) and cortical networks involved in social information processing. To date, little is known about the influence of age/puberty on these mechanisms and about their predictive effect on adolescents' ER. In a series of experiments, we will investigate changes in these mechanisms (i.e., social experience, attentional bias towards peers, and neural responses to peers) as a function of age and puberty, in 10- to 15-year-old adolescents. Constructs will be measured concurrently and longitudinally using a combination of tasks, questionnaires, and neuroimaging paradigms. HQP will have the opportunity to create and validate extensions of existing attention and ER measures, to collect and analyze longitudinal neuroimaging data, and to participate in the dissemination of findings. Charting maturational trajectories of social, cognitive, and biological mechanisms supporting ER in adolescence will inform models of social information processing, which currently do not include considerations of developmental change in its components (e.g., attention, interpretation). Furthering our understanding of the changing ways in which adolescents' attention is naturally allocated to their social environment can point to effective methods of communicating information to teenagers; for instance, findings have implications for the design of technology intended for adolescent users. Identifying factors that facilitate ER can also inform efforts to support teenagers' social adjustment-an outcome which will be particularly important in the wake of COVID-19's disruption to youth's social lives.