Social perspective taking is associated with self-reported prosocial behavior and regional cortical thickness across adolescence

Abstract

Basic perspective taking and mentalising abilities develop in childhood, but recent studies indicate that the use of social perspective taking to guide decisions and actions has a prolonged development that continues throughout adolescence. Here, we aimed to replicate this research and investigate the hypotheses that individual differences in social perspective taking in adolescence are associated with real-life prosocial and antisocial behavior and differences in brain structure. We employed an experimental approach and a large cross-sectional sample (n=293) of participants aged 7-26 years old to assess age-related improvement in social perspective taking usage during performance of a version of the Director task. In subsamples, we then tested how individual differences in social perspective taking were related to self-reported prosocial behavior and peer relationship problems on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) (n=184) and to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures of regional cortical thickness and surface area (n=226). The pattern of results in the Director task replicated previous findings by demonstrating continued improvement in use of social perspective taking across adolescence. The study also showed that better social perspective taking usage is associated with more self-reported prosocial behavior, as well as to thinner cerebral cortex in regions in the left hemisphere encompassing parts of the caudal middle frontal and precentral gyri and lateral parietal regions. These associations were observed independently of age, and might partly reflect individual developmental variability. The relevance of cortical development was additionally supported by indirect effects of age on social perspective taking usage via cortical thickness.

Behavioral and Neural Pathways Supporting the Development of Prosocial and Risk‐Taking Behavior Across Adolescence

“…Consistent with prior studies, we found that higher levels of intention to comfort and social perspective taking at the final wave were uniquely related to more prosocial behavior, but these measures were not related to rebellious behavior. The relations among empathic tendencies, perspective taking, and prosocial behaviors have been well documented (Eisenberg, ; Overgaauw et al, ; Tamnes et al, ), and previous studies also reported relations between emotionality and prosocial behavior (Eisenberg et al, ).…”

“…This process results in more fine‐tuned brain regions that yield more efficient cognitive and social processing and improved performance with age (Blakemore, ). Indeed, structural brain development, capturing the most consistent within‐individual patterns of change, has been associated with a number of developmental outcomes such as identity formation and social functioning (Becht et al, ; Blakemore & Mills, ; Tamnes et al, ), yet how structural development relates to prosocial and/or risk‐taking behaviors is less well known.…”

Pragmatic Language Processing in the Adolescent Brain

“…the ability to attribute thoughts, perspectives, opinions, and emotions to others, contributes to the emergence of pragmatic competence during development [4,37,64]. ToM is still developing in adolescence; adolescents make more errors and use perspective taking less frequently than adults when performing tasks that require representing other people's mental states [19,29,57,59].…”

Role theory of schools and adolescent health

“…42 Performers will vary in how sensitive they are to audience reactions. Adolescence is associated with increasing awareness of others' perspectives, 43,44 and increased susceptibility to peer influence 25,26 and sensitivity to peer exclusion. 28 In the course of adolescence, students tend to become more sensitive to audience reactions, from teachers but especially from other students.…”