Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Adolescence is a period of development with high incidence of affective disorders representing poor cognitive control over affect, but little is known about how adolescent emotional systems compare to those of adults and how emotion influences still-maturing cognitive control systems. The ability to inhibit a response, which is crucial for cognitive control of behavior, continues to improve through adolescence. Though the core cognitive processes for inhibitory control are available in adolescence, the ability to utilize them in a reliable manner continues to mature, making adolescents susceptible to making errors. This study aimed to explore the vulnerabilities of the adolescent inhibitory control system to emotion by manipulating autonomic arousal. Adolescents (age 15-16) and adults (age 24-29) performed an oculomotor inhibitory control task as they heard sequences of temporally unpredictable tones (increased arousal condition) and temporally predictable tones (lower arousal, control condition) while autonomic arousal was assessed via pupillometry. Results indicated that adolescents have higher levels of arousal compared to adults, but less awareness of their arousal levels. Secondly, adolescents' inhibitory control was comparable to adults' even under arousal conditions but they showed greater effects of arousal reflected in optimal performance with higher levels of arousal. Thirdly, in adolescents but not adults, individuals who scored higher on measures of dysregulation showed greater sensitivity of inhibitory control to arousal. Together, these results indicate that emotional and inhibitory control processes are more susceptible to external stressors in adolescence than in adulthood. This may underlie known limitations during this period in higher level regulation of behavior, particularly in the face of stressors.
Author: Sarah J. Ordaz
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W29095741