title: Harm avoidance in adolescents modulates late positive potentials during affective picture processing.
abstract: Research in adults has shown that individual differences in harm avoidance (HA) modulate electrophysiological responses to affective stimuli. To determine whether HA in adolescents modulates affective information processing, we collected event-related potentials from 70 adolescents while they viewed 90 pictures from the Chinese affective picture system. Multiple regressions revealed that HA negatively predicted late positive potential (LPP) for positive pictures and positively predicted for negative pictures; however, HA did not correlate with LPP for neutral pictures. The results suggest that at the late evaluative stage, high-HA adolescents display attentional bias to negative pictures while low-HA adolescents display attentional bias to negative pictures. Moreover, these dissociable attentional patterns imply that individual differences in adolescents' HA modulate the late selective attention mechanism of affective information.
authors.affiliation: Mental Health Center, Yancheng Institute of Technology, Yancheng City 224051, China. zwh20120106@126.com
authors.forename: Wenhai
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jiamei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Ziyin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ni
authors.forename: Xia
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Dahua
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Jiliang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D040261:Harm Reduction / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult