Need for approval and antisocial behavior moderate the effect of socioemotional cues on adolescent girls’ cognitive control

Abstract

Adolescence is a period of heightened sensitivity to emotional and social stimuli (Somerville, 2013;Steinberg, 2008). This acute sensitivity coincides with the protracted development of cognitive control systems, leading a subset of adolescents to experience emotion regulation difficulties (Schweizer et al., 2020). Previous work using laboratory tasks reveals age-related reductions in the interfering nature of socioemotional stimuli on cognitive control throughout child and adolescent development, with peak performance not occurring until early adulthood (Cohen et al., 2016;Tottenham et al., 2011). Relative to adults, adolescents show lower levels of cognitive control in the face of socially salient cues, such as happy (