ERP STUDY OF BRAIN ACTIVITY DEVELOPMENT DURING EMOTIONAL CONFLICT TASK PERFORMANCE

Emotional processing is a feature of emotional development. We examined ERP responses during an emotional conflict task in healthy children.
Participants were 155 children aged between 7 and 20 year: 7 - 9 (8,00; SD= 8,53), 10 - 12 (11,07; SD= 0,82), 13 - 15 (14,07; SD= 0,73), 16 -18 (17,06; SD= 0,70), 19 – 20 (19,41; SD= 0,62). The Ethics Committee of al-Farabi KazNU approved the study. EEG was recorded during the emotional conflict task (stimuli used from https://nyu.databrary.org) by usnig ANT-Neuro (Germany), 64 channels. Participants completed the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (Salovey, P., 1995) before the experiment. EEG was preprocessed in EEGLAB.N170 amplitude was analyzed in the posterior network.Behavioral data analyses reviled condition*sex effect for “Angry” faces (F= 5,84; p = 0,02).
Repeated - measures ANOVA of N170 amplitude revealed significant condition*sex effect (F= 6,80; p = 0,01), and condition*group*sex effect (F= 3,29; p = 0,01) for “Angry” face. Amplitude to congruent stimulus was higher in younger female group, whereas uncongruent “Angry” was higher in boys. Scores in Clarity (F= 26,15; p = 0,00) and Repair (F= 52,92; p = 0,00) were higher in younger groups.Males responded strongly to incongruent “Angry”.
Overall, the findings indicate age- and sex-related differences in behavioral performance and neural responses to emotional facial stimuli, modulated by task condition and emotional valence. Emotional intelligence also varied across age groups.
Funding. This research has was funded by the Committee of Science of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant No. BR27198099).