RH-JF+Social+changes

__**SOCIAL CHANGES**__ · Increased independence · Rebellion · Risk taking behaviour · Fitting in · Increased importance of peers · Increased responsibility · Peer pressure · Conflicts with parents and siblings

Social relationships are particularly important during adolescence. In recent years, MRI studies have shown that the brain is subject to a lot of structural development during adolescence. Brain areas that are to do with the social cognition, undergo the most difficult and everlasting change. However, the development of social cognition during adolescence and its neural foundation remains poorly understood. Here, they begin by outlining how the brain changes between childhood and adulthood. They then describe findings that have emerged from behavioural and neuroimaging studies of the recognition of facial expression during adolescence. Finally, they present new data that demonstrate development of emotional perspective taking during adolescence. In this study, 112 participants, aged 8–36 years, performed a computerised task that involved taking an emotional perspective either from the participant's own point of view or from that of another person. The results showed that average difference in reaction time to answer questions in the first person perspective and third person perspective significantly decreased with age. The reaction time difference of adults tended to cluster close to the zero line (third person equal to first person), while a greater proportion of pre-adolescents had higher difference values in both the positive third person over first person and negative direction first person over third person of the scale. The data suggest that the efficiency, and possibly strategy, of perspective taking develop in parallel with brain maturation and psychosocial development during adolescence. []

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