Peer relationships become a major concern in adolescence, yet event-related potential (ERP) measures of reactivity to social feedback in adolescence are limited. In this pilot study, we tested a novel task to elicit reactivity to social feedback in youth. Participants (10–15 years old; 57.9% male; N = 19) played a game that involved exchanging personal information with peers, voting to remove players from the game, and receiving rejection and acceptance feedback from peers. Results indicated that participants modified their voting behavior in response to peer feedback, and rejection feedback was associated with a negativity in the ERP wave compared to acceptance (i.e., the feedback negativity, FN). The FN predicted behavioral patterns, such that participants who showed greater neural reactivity to social feedback were less likely to reject co-players. Preliminary analyses suggest that the task may be a useful measure of individual differences: adolescents higher in social anxiety symptoms were less likely to reject peers and showed an enhanced FN to rejection vs. acceptance feedback, and higher depressive symptoms predicted an increased FN to rejection specifically. Results suggest that the FN elicited by social feedback may be a useful, economical neural measure of social processing across development and in clinical research.

Reward processing is often considered to be a monolithic construct, with different incentive types eliciting equivalent neural and behavioural responses. The majority of the literature on reward processing has used monetary incentives to elicit reward-related activity; yet social incentives may be particularly important due to their powerful ability to shape behaviour. Findings from studies comparing social and monetary rewards have identified both overlapping and distinct responses. In order to explore whether reward processing is domain-general or category-specific (i.e., the same or different across reward types), the present study recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from early adolescents (ages 12-13) and emerging adults (ages 18-25) while they completed social and monetary reward tasks. Temporospatial principal components analysis revealed morphologically-similar reward positivities (RewPs) in the social and monetary reward tasks in each age group. In early adolescents, no significant difference was found between the magnitude of the RewP to social and monetary rewards. In emerging adults, however, the RewP to monetary rewards was significantly larger than the RewP to social rewards. Additionally, responses to feedback between the two tasks were not significantly correlated in either age group. These results suggest that both domain-general and category-specific processes underlie neural responses to rewards and that the relative incentive value of different types of rewards may change across development. Findings from this study have important implications for understanding the role that neural response to rewards plays in the development of psychopathology during adolescence.

Peer relationships play a major role in adolescent development, but few methods exist for measuring social processing at the neurophysiological level. This study extends our pilot study of Island Getaway, a task for eliciting event-related potentials (ERPs) to peer feedback. We differentiated ERPs using principal components analysis (PCA) and examined associations with behavioral and self-report measures in young adolescents (N = 412). PCA revealed an early negativity in the ERP enhanced for rejection feedback, followed by a series of positivities (consistent with reward positivity [RewP], P300, and late positive potential) that were enhanced for acceptance feedback. Greater self-reported task engagement correlated with a larger RewP to acceptance and lower rates of rejecting peers. Youth higher in depressive symptoms exhibited a blunted RewP to social acceptance and reported lower engagement. Results highlight ERP components sensitive to peer feedback that may inform understanding of social processes relevant to typical and atypical development.