Social performance monitoring can be defined as one’s ability to detect errors and to adjust one’s behavior accordingly while performing actions in a social context. As such, it might require...Show moreSocial performance monitoring can be defined as one’s ability to detect errors and to adjust one’s behavior accordingly while performing actions in a social context. As such, it might require perspective taking abilities. The present study thus explores the relationship between social performance monitoring and empathy in children and adolescents across different contexts. Participants (N= 107) aged 9-19 completed self-report measures of empathy and engaged in a performance monitoring task (i.e., shooting a moving cannon whenever it lined up with a target) in individual, cooperative, and competitive settings. Results showed that the older children were, the better they performed in the cannonball task, pointing to age-related improvements in performance monitoring capabilities. Surprisingly, task performance did not differ between individual and social contexts. Moreover, neither cognitive nor affective empathy significantly predicted task performance in any condition. Regarding changes in empathy dimensions across development, our results revealed that, in line with our hypotheses, cognitive empathy increased with age, while affective empathy remained stable. Moreover, as expected, no effects of gender on cognitive empathy were found, while girls did report significantly higher levels of affective empathy than boys. Our behavioral study adds new insights to existing literature mostly consisting of electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies, suggesting that children and adolescents’ performance monitoring behavior is possibly neither influenced by the social context, nor by how empathetic they are. Further behavioral research on the potentially complex interplay between empathy and social performance monitoring in children and adolescents is thus warranted.Show less
The present study experimentally investigated the role of rejection sensitivity during adolescence and young adulthood on the ability of predicting the chance of receiving positive peer feedback....Show moreThe present study experimentally investigated the role of rejection sensitivity during adolescence and young adulthood on the ability of predicting the chance of receiving positive peer feedback. Previous studies examined trait characteristics, neural correlates and social learning of socially anxious individuals and found that rejection sensitivity has a negative impact on how one predicts and implements positive feedback. Participants (132 adults and 61 adolescents) took part in a social learning paradigm, wherein they had to predict whether four of their peers would like or dislike them based on certain personality characteristics. To see if learning biases are present, the scores of the participants were operationalized by calculating the Positive Prediction Discrepancy (PPD), the difference between the expected ratio of positive feedback and the actual probability of it. Unknown to the participants, the four peers differed in the probability of giving positive feedback. Results indicated that neither rejection sensitivity (RS) nor age significantly predicted PPD scores for peer 1, peer 3, and peer 4. However, RS exhibited a significant negative effect on PPD scores for peer 2, suggesting that higher RS was associated with lower predictions of positive feedback for this peer. Altogether, this study suggests that while rejection sensitivity did show a significant negative relationship with positive prediction discrepancy for peer 2, there was no significant impact observed for the other peers or with age across the different peer feedback anticipation discrepancies. This indicates a nuanced association between rejection sensitivity and the anticipation of positive feedback, particularly in specific peer contexts, rather than a generalized effect across all peers.Show less
Abstract: It is not fully understood how effortful control is influenced by environmental factors. Effortful control is an important underpinning of self-regulation and plays influences...Show moreAbstract: It is not fully understood how effortful control is influenced by environmental factors. Effortful control is an important underpinning of self-regulation and plays influences developmental outcomes such as conscious development and externalizing behavior. We investigated if internalized conduct mediated the relation between parental sensitivity and effortful control in children aged 5-8. To do so, questionnaires were used to measure internalized conduct and effortful control and a parent-child drawing task was used to measure sensitive parenting. In the questionnaire for effortful, questions about the levels of effortful control of the child were answered by the primary parent. In the questionnaire for internalized conduct, questions about the levels of internalized conduct of the child were answered by the other parent. The drawing task for parental sensitivity was done by the child and the primary parent. Significant effects were found in parental sensitivity as a predictor of both internalized conduct and effortful control. In addition a significant effect was found in internalized conduct as a predictor of effortful control. However, internalized conduct was not found to be a mediator in the relation between parental sensitivity and effortful control in this study.Show less
