The Interplay between Gaze Following, Emotion Recognition, and Empathy across Adolescence; a Pubertal Dip in Performance?

Abstract

During puberty a dip in face recognition is often observed, possibly caused by heightened levels of gonadal hormones which in turn affects the re-organization of relevant cortical circuitry. In the current study we investigated whether a pubertal dip could be observed in three other abilities related to social information processing: gaze following, emotion recognition from the eyes, and empathizing abilities. Across these abilities we further explored whether these measurements revealed sex differences as another way to understand how gonadal hormones affect processing of social information. Results show that across adolescence, there are improvements in emotion recognition from the eyes and in empathizing abilities. These improvements did not show a dip, but are more plateau-like. The gaze cueing effect did not change over adolescence. We only observed sex differences in empathizing abilities, with girls showing higher scores than boys. Based on these results it appears that gonadal hormones are not exerting a unified influence on higher levels of social information processing. Further research should also explore changes in (visual) information processing around puberty onset to find a more fitted explanation for changes in social behavior across adolescence.