Feedback Processing in Adolescence: An Event-Related Potential Study of Age and Gender Differences

Abstract

Adolescence has frequently been characterized as a period of increased risk taking, which may be largely driven by maturational changes in neural areas that process incentives. To investigate age- and gender-related differences in reward processing, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from 80 participants in a gambling game, in which monetary wins and losses were either large or small. We measured two ERP components: the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and the feedback P3 (fP3). The FRN was sensitive to the size of a win in both adult (aged 23-35 years) and adolescent (aged 13-17 years) males, but not in females. Small wins appeared to be less rewarding for males than for females, which may in part explain more approach-driven behavior in males in general. Furthermore, adolescent boys showed both delayed FRNs to high losses and less differentiation in FRN amplitude between wins and losses in comparison to girls. The fP3, which is thought to index the salience of the feedback at a more conscious level than the FRN, was also larger in boys than in girls. Taken together, these results imply that higher levels of risk taking that are commonly reported in adolescent males may be driven both by hypersensitivity to high rewards and insensitivity to punishment or losses.

Feedback-related negativity is enhanced in adolescence during a gambling task with and without probabilistic reinforcement learning

“…Adolescents showed higher FRN amplitudes to losses than adults under all conditions, a finding that in general terms aligns with other studies that have found similar data where nonprobabilistic learning is involved and with those that indicate that adolescents experience higher sensitivity to external feedback than adults [8,9]. To the best of our knowledge, however, this is the first study to find differences between adolescents and adults related to FRN in reinforcement probabilistic learning.…”

“…Grose-Fifer et al [8] found similar results, and suggested that adolescents have less efficient processing when it comes to adjusting their behavior to feedback. Another study reported that FRN latency decreases over the course of adolescent development, between 10 and 17 years of age, suggesting an increasing dependency on internal compared with external representations in terms of directing behavior [20].…”

“…According to the literature, FRN reached its maximum amplitude at Fz [3,8,10]; thus, statistical analyses were carried out only at that location. The analysis of variances for group differences in FRN amplitudes and latencies were performed only with the data from when the participant lost, because in four adolescents, it was not possible to score this component when they won.…”

“…Its amplitude is higher for negative than positive outcomes [4,7]. FRN amplitude has been related to the motivational impact of stimuli [3,8], the cognitive and emotional evaluation of salient information [4], and the realization that events are worse than expected [7].…”

“…Some have found higher FRN amplitude in relation to losses in adolescents than adults, suggesting that the former show a higher sensitivity to external feedback [8,9]; however, others found no such differences [10,11], leading Santesso et al [10] to propose that FRN amplitudes in adolescents and adults depend on affective/ motivational factors such as individual differences in sensitivity to punishment.…”