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

从面部表情或语调等非语言线索中解读情绪状态的能力，是成功人际交往的一个关键方面。解码这些线索的能力——尤其是声音中包含的线索——在青少年时期继续成熟。青少年尤其难以识别其他青少年发出的声音表达中的情感意图。因此，尽管同伴传递的非语言信号对青少年的社会经验至关重要，但对青少年来说，解释这些信号可能尤其具有挑战性。该研究计划的长期目标是阐明支持青少年不断增长的解读同伴非语言暗示（情感识别[ER]）能力的社会、认知和生物学机制。我们将研究青春期内质反应的三个潜在机制预测因素的发育变化：(1)与同伴的社会经验（“实践效应”），因为青少年开始花更少的时间与照顾者在一起，更多的时间与朋友在一起；(2)更多的注意力集中在同伴的面孔和声音上，而不是其他社会信号（如照顾者的），因为青少年时期朋友传达的社会信息更加突出；(3)神经系统的持续发展，包括对显著刺激敏感的皮层下区域(如杏仁核，纹状体)和皮层网络参与社会信息处理。迄今为止，关于年龄/青春期对这些机制的影响及其对青少年ER的预测作用知之甚少。在一系列的实验中，我们将研究这些机制（即社会经验、对同伴的注意偏见和对同伴的神经反应）在10- 15岁青少年中作为年龄和青春期的函数的变化。构念将使用任务、问卷调查和神经成像范例的组合来同时和纵向地测量。HQP将有机会创建和验证现有关注和ER措施的扩展，收集和分析纵向神经成像数据，并参与研究结果的传播。绘制支持青少年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，这些模型目前没有考虑到其组成部分（例如，注意力、解释）的发育变化。进一步了解青少年的注意力自然分配到社会环境的方式的变化，可以指出向青少年传播信息的有效方法；例如，研究结果对针对青少年用户的技术设计具有启示意义。确定促进急诊的因素还可以为支持青少年社会适应的工作提供信息，这一结果在2019冠状病毒病对青少年的社会生活造成破坏之后尤为重要。

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.