Puberty drives fear learning during adolescence

Risk for adverse outcomes, including the onset of mental illness, increases during adolescence. This increase may be linked to both new exposures, such as violence at home or in the community, or to physiological changes driven by puberty. There are significant sex differences in adolescent risk, for instance, anxiety disorders are significantly more prevalent in girls than boys. Fear learning is linked to mental health and may develop during adolescence, but the role of puberty in adolescent-specific change has not yet been systematically evaluated. We conducted a longitudinal study of fear learning that tested fear-potentiated startle (FPS) in 78 children (40 girls) aged 8-16 years. Participants completed two to three visits that included a differential fear conditioning task and self-report of both pubertal status and violence exposure. We tested for effects of sex, pubertal status, and violence exposure on FPS over time with latent growth curve models. We also examined the association between FPS and later anxiety symptoms. We found significant changes in FPS to the threat cue, but not the safety cue, across visits. Higher pubertal status was significantly associated with increased FPS to threat cues at each visit, whereas sex and violence exposure were not. FPS to threat during the baseline visit also predicted later anxiety symptoms. These findings suggest that puberty drives increased fear response to threat cues similarly for girls and boys, and that this effect may not be significantly impacted by individual differences in violence exposure during early adolescence.