Beneath the Surface of Self-Reports: Dissecting Subjective and Neural Responses to Age-Specific Visual Stimuli

The current study examined how adolescents respond to emotionally arousing images that are considered age-appropriate, such as sports, food, and threatening animals. Prior research in adults has shown a mismatch between subjective arousal ratings and the late positive potential (LPP) for pleasant images, and we aimed to test whether this discrepancy is also present in adolescents. The results showed a larger LPP in response to unpleasant, compared to pleasant, contents. However, comparisons across the different emotional contents showed that the concordance between subjective and neural engagement varies depending on the emotional contents of the scenes. Specifically, images of threatening animals were rated high in emotional arousal and prompted the largest LPP in adolescents, while images of sad people and images of mundane activities were rated lower in emotional arousal and prompted the smallest LPP responses. However, adolescents showed significant divergence in their responses to pleasant images depicting food and sport: despite being rated high in emotional arousal, these images elicited relatively small LPPs. These results highlight the challenges of selecting emotional pictures to assess neuroaffective responses to pleasant and unpleasant pictures in adolescents. To overcome these challenges, future studies may adopt experimental paradigms that will allow researchers to measure neuroaffective responses not just in free-viewing contexts but also during anticipation and reception of actual rewards (and punishments).