The audience effect in adolescence depends on who's looking over your shoulder

Abstract

Adolescents have been shown to be particularly sensitive to peer influence. However, the data supporting these findings have been mostly limited to the impact of peers on risk-taking behaviours. Here, we investigated the influence of peers on performance of a high-level cognitive task (relational reasoning) during adolescence. We further assessed whether this effect on performance was dependent on the identity of the audience, either a friend (peer) or the experimenter (non-peer). We tested 24 younger adolescent (10.6–14.2 years), 20 older adolescent (14.9–17.8 years) and 20 adult (21.8–34.9 years) female participants. The presence of an audience affected adolescent, but not adult, relational reasoning performance. This audience effect on adolescent performance was influenced by the participants' age, task difficulty and the identity of the audience. These findings may have implications for education, where adolescents often do classwork or homework in the presence of others.

Children are sensitive to reputation when giving to both ingroup and outgroup members

“…For example, stronger observer effects might have been found if we had reminded adults that they were being watched and evaluated at the start of each trial. Also possible is that children generally have greater concerns with how they will be judged by others (Ruggeri et al, 2017;Wolf, Bazargani, Kilford, Dumontheil, Blakemore, 2015). Finally, our study is not unique in failing to find observer effects in adults.…”

Neural correlates of prosocial peer influence on public goods game donations during adolescence

“…In the 12-14-year-olds, mPFC activity was elevated when participants showed reciprocal behavior, whereas the other age groups showed similar levels of mPFC activity also when defecting others (Van den Bos et al, 2011). Thus, together with the prior behavioral studies these results indicate that younger adolescents may be more sensitive to social context (Wolf et al, 2015).…”

What motivates adolescents? Neural responses to rewards and their influence on adolescents’ risk taking, learning, and cognitive control

“…Additionally, a recent study including adolescents found a hindering effect of an audience on adolescents' relational reasoning performance (Wolf et al, 2015). Younger adolescents (10-14 years), older adolescents (14-17 years) and adults (21-34 years) performed a relational reasoning task while alone, with an experimenter, or with a friend present.…”