title: 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.
authors.affiliation: UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK. Electronic address: laura.kathrin.wolf@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Laura K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Wolf
authors.affiliation: UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, Gower St, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: Narges
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bazargani
authors.affiliation: UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
authors.forename: Emma J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Kilford
authors.affiliation: UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK; Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK.
authors.forename: Iroise
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dumontheil
authors.affiliation: UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
authors.forename: Sarah-Jayne
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Blakemore
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D033062:Friends / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D000067074:Peer Influence; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Adolescence; Audience effect; Development; Peer influence; Reasoning