title: The neural and behavioral correlates of social evaluation in childhood.
abstract: Being accepted or rejected by peers is highly salient for developing social relations in childhood. We investigated the behavioral and neural correlates of social feedback and subsequent aggression in 7-10-year-old children, using the Social Network Aggression Task (SNAT). Participants viewed pictures of peers that gave positive, neutral or negative feedback to the participant's profile. Next, participants could blast a loud noise towards the peer, as an index of aggression. We included three groups (N=19, N=28 and N=27) and combined the results meta-analytically. Negative social feedback resulted in the most behavioral aggression, with large combined effect-sizes. Whole brain condition effects for each separate sample failed to show robust effects, possibly due to the small samples. Exploratory analyses over the combined test and replication samples confirmed heightened activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) after negative social feedback. Moreover, meta-analyses of activity in predefined regions of interest showed that negative social feedback resulted in more neural activation in the amygdala, anterior insula and the mPFC/anterior cingulate cortex. Together, the results show that social motivation is already highly salient in middle childhood, and indicate that the SNAT is a valid paradigm for assessing the neural and behavioral correlates of social evaluation in children.
authors.affiliation: Leiden Consortium on Individual Development, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, The Netherlands. Electronic address: m.achterberg@fsw.leidenuniv.nl.
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Achterberg
authors.affiliation: Leiden Consortium on Individual Development, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Anna C K
authors.initials: ACK
authors.lastname: van Duijvenvoorde
authors.affiliation: Leiden Consortium on Individual Development, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Mara
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van der Meulen
authors.affiliation: Leiden Consortium on Individual Development, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Saskia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Euser
authors.affiliation: Leiden Consortium on Individual Development, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marian J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Bakermans-Kranenburg
authors.affiliation: Leiden Consortium on Individual Development, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Eveline A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Crone
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D012929:Psychological Distance
keywords: Aggression; Amygdala; Childhood; Meta-analysis; Social feedback; Social rejection