Brain potentials during affective picture processing in children

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2008.11.006

Biological Psychology

Volume 80, Issue 3, March 2009, Pages 333-338

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2008.11.006 Get rights and content

Abstract

In adults, emotional (e.g., both unpleasant and pleasant) compared to neutral pictures elicit an increase in the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive potential (LPP); modulation of these ERP components are thought to reflect the facilitated processing of, and increased attention to, motivationally salient stimuli. To determine whether the EPN and LPP are sensitive to emotional content in children, high-density EEG was recorded from 18 children who were 5–8 years of age (mean age = 77 months, SD = 11 months) while they viewed developmentally appropriate pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System. Self-reported ratings of valence and arousal were also obtained. An EPN was not evident following emotional compared to neutral pictures; however, a positivity maximal at occipital–parietal recording sites was increased from 500 to 1000 ms following pleasant pictures and from 500 to 1500 ms following unpleasant pictures. Comparisons between the EPN and LPP observed in children and adults, and implications for developmental studies of emotion, are discussed.

Section snippets

Participants

Twenty-five children (12 male, 13 female) and their caregivers provided informed consent to participate in the current study. Data from two subjects (both female) were excluded due to poor quality EEG recording, and data from 5 of the oldest remaining subjects were not included in these analyses so as to increase the homogeneity of age among the subjects. Thus, the final sample was comprised of 18 children who were 5 to 8 years of age; this sample included 9 males (mean age = 79.56 months, SD =

Valence

Fig. 1 presents the average valence and arousal ratings for each picture type. Valence ratings differed as a function of Picture Type (F(2,22) = 53.32, p < .001); pleasant pictures (M = 3.23; SD = .55) were rated as more pleasant than neutral (M = 2.31; SD = .49; t(11) = 5.10, p < .001) and unpleasant (M = 1.08; SD = .40; t(11) = 9.44, p < .001) pictures; additionally, neutral pictures were rated as more pleasant than unpleasant pictures (t(11) = 5.71, p < .001). Overall, then, valence ratings increased from unpleasant to

Discussion

The present study is among the first to document that the LPP is sensitive to meaningful differences in the emotional content of complex visual stimuli in children. In particular, children were characterized by an increased positivity in their ERP at bilateral occipital–parietal sites between 500 and 1500 ms following the presentation of unpleasant compared to neutral stimuli; a similar effect was evident for pleasant compared to neutral pictures in the 500–1000 ms window.

An increased

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Brain potentials during affective picture processing in children

Abstract

Section snippets

Participants

Valence

Discussion

Biological Psychology

Biological Psychology

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Biological Psychiatry

Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology

Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology

Annotation: what electrical brain activity tells us about brain function that other techniques cannot tell us—a child psychiatric perspective

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

Brain potentials in perception: picture complexity and emotional arousal

Psychophysiology

The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) in the study of emotion and attention

An event-related potential study of the processing of affective facial expressions in young children who experienced maltreatment during the first year of life

Development and Psychopathology

Emotion regulation as a scientific construct: methodological challenges and directions for child development research

Child Development

The development of emotion regulation and dysregulation: a clinical perspective

Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development

Affect regulation, brain development, and behavioral/emotional health in adolescence

CNS Spectrums

The development of affect regulation: bringing together basic and clinical perspectives

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Affective style and affective disorders: perspectives from affective neuroscience

Cognition and Emotion

When does size not matter? Effects of stimulus size on affective modulation

Psychophysiology

Deconstructing reappraisal: descriptions preceding arousing pictures modulates the subsequent neural response

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

Neural response to emotional pictures is unaffected by concurrent task difficulty: an event-related potential study

Behavioral Neuroscience

Attending to affect: appraisal strategies modulate the electrocortical response to arousing pictures

Emotion

Reappraisal modulates the electrocortical response to negative pictures

Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience

The persistence of attention to emotion: brain potentials during and after picture presentation

Emotion

P300: a model of the variables controlling its amplitude

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

A triarchic model of P300 amplitude

Psychophysiology

Fleeting images: rapid affect discrimination in the visual cortex

Neuroreport

Large-scale neural correlates of affective picture processing

Psychophysiology