Adolescent Development of the
Cortisol Response to Social
Evaluation
Puberty
Esther van den Bos & Michiel Westenberg
Social Cognition
04-09-2014
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Stress responses to social evaluation
• Increase during adolescence
• Possibly due to normative developments:
• Puberty
• Socio-cognitive development
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Related to Puberty
• Cross-sectional evidence:
• Increase with age/puberty (Gunnar et al., 2009;
Stroud et al., 2009; Sumter et al., 2010)
• Longitudinal evidence:
• Increase with puberty rather than age
(Van den Bos et al., 2014. Child Development)
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Related to Social cognition?
Somerville et al. (2014):
• Adolescents show heightened:
• Self-conscious emotions
• Skin conductance responses
• medial-prefrontal cortex activity
• mPFC associated with social cognition (and
affective valuation)
• maintaining representation of evaluation
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Recursive thinking
• Thinking about thinking
• Starts in early childhood (Miller, Kessel, & Flavell,
1970)
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Thinking about people
Thinking about actions
Thinking about thoughts
Thinking about thoughts about thoughts
• Continues in adolescence (Müeller & Overton, 2010;
Van den Bos et al., submitted)
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Hypothesis
• Considering what others think about oneself
requires recursive thinking (Veith, 1980)
• Emergence of recursive thinking may heighten
sensitivity to social-evaluative threat
• Change perception of situation
• -> Cortisol response to social evaluation
increases with emergence of recursive thinking
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Data
• Part of longitudinal SAND-study:
• 4 Waves (first in 2005)
• 1 year intervals
• Cross-sequential design
• Present data:
• Wave 1 and Wave 3 (T1, T2)
• 2 year interval
• 221 participants, Age T1: 8-17 (M = 13.1)
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Recursive Thinking Test
• Cartoon description task (Miller, Kessel, &
Flavell, 1970)
• “What is the boy (girl) thinking?”
• Three types of items
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No Recursion
• Thinking about action (3 items)
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One-loop Recursion
• Thinking about thinking… (5 items)
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Two-loop Recursion
• Thinking about thinking about thinking… (6 items)
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Statistical analyses I
• Assignment to levels of recursive thinking
• Latent Class Analysis
• Stepflexmix (Leisch, 2007)
• 3 analyses:
• Time 1
• Time 2
• Time 1 and Time 2
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Leiden Public Speaking Task
-Opportunity to prepare
-Pre-recorded audience
Westenberg et al (2009). Biological
Psychology
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Statistical Anayses II
• Concurrent relation with cortisol response
• Dependent variables:
• Area Under the Curve increase (7 samples)
• Speech Anticipation effect
• Speech Delivery effect
• Predictors (time-varying):
• Level of Recursive Thinking
• Score on Pubertal Development Scale (Petersen et al.,
1988)
• Regression analysis with clustered bootstrap (de
Rooij)
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Statistical Analysis III
• Relating changes in recursive thinking to
changes in cortisol response
• Dependent variables:
• Δ AUCi
• Δ Speech Anticipation
• Δ Speech Delivery
• Regression models:
• “Action to one-loop” (vs. other trajectory)
• “Action to one-loop” + ΔPDS
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Discussion
• Summary:
• Pubertal development strongest predictor
• Additional increase with recursive thinking
• Recursive thinking mainly affects anticipation
• Concurrently
• Over time
• Main limitation:
• Relatively old sample
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Discussion
• Conclusion
• Cortisol response to social evaluation is related to
social-cognitive development
• Emergence of recursive thinking seems to
heighten sensitivity to social-evaluative threat
• Possible implication:
• Emergence of recursive thinking may trigger social
anxiety in vulnerable youth (c.f. Bokhorst et al., 2008;
Gren-Landell et al., 2009; Ollendick & Hirshfeld-Becker, 2002)
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Thanks to
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Senem Fincan
Jiska Koster
Anna van Duijvenvoorde
Sindy Sumter
Anne Miers
Laura Compier-de Block
Ellen Middag
Manja Koenders
Masha Takens
• www.sasr.nl
•
bosejvanden@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
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