Adolescent Thoughts and Feelings Project (ATFP)

Adolescence is associated with marked changes in social behaviour, emotion regulation and inhibition. Perhaps more concerning, we also see increases in anti-social and risk-taking behaviour among adolescents. Past work has linked altered motivational systems to both anti-social behaviour and risk-taking behaviour. These changes in motivational systems can express themselves as changes in reward processing – those high in anti-social behaviour are more sensitive to reward than punishment.

However, previous research with adolescents investigating the relationship between anti-social behaviour and reward-related neural processes has been largely inconsistent, which may be related to the techniques used. Electroencephalogram (EEG) offers an attractive methodology for investigating the rapid neural mechanisms evoked by feedback stimuli. Two EEG markers have been associated with feedback processing: feedback related negativity (FRN), thought to reflect outcome monitoring; and the P3b, which reflects the encoding of the motivational salience of a reward cue.

- To investigate how EEG markers of reward and punishment processing are related to antisocial behaviour in adolescents.
- To investigate how this relationship is further influenced by participant age and gender.
- Adolescents aged 11–18 took part in a three-hour testing session.
- They were asked to complete computer tasks related to feedback processing, inhibition and emotion regulation.
- During these tasks, participants’ neural responses were measured using high-density EEG.
- Participants were also asked to report on several personality and behavioural indices, including antisocial behaviour, depression and anxiety measures.
Adolescents who reported higher levels of anti-social behaviour demonstrated significant differences in their neural response when presented with reward and punishment feedback compared to adolescents who reported lower levels of anti-social behaviour.
1. Those with higher anti-social behaviour scores demonstrated larger P3b to reward compared to punishment, an effect not seen in those with lower anti-social behaviour, suggestive of a higher motivational significance of reward compared to punishment in those more prone to anti-social behaviour.
2. Higher anti-social behaviour scores were associated with smaller differences between FRN response evoked by reward and punishment stimuli. As the FRN is indicative of outcome processing, this suggests that those more prone to anti-social behaviour produce less reliable error signals differentiating punishment and reward.
3. Older participants demonstrated greater differences in FRN response evoked by reward and punishment stimuli which may reflect the maturation of brain circuits responsible to outcome monitoring over adolescence.
- R.M. Pasco Fearon,
- Peter Fonagy,
- Tarek Bel-Bahar,
- Tobias Nolte,
- Alex Desatnik,
- James G. Sheffield
Collaborators
Michael J. Crowley (Yale Child Study Center)
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James G. Sheffield

Adolescent Thoughts and Feelings Project (ATFP)

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