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Abstract
Relational aggression is a type of aggression that aims to hurt others through relationships and includes behaviors such as gossip and ostracism. This type of aggression is very common among adolescent girls, and in its more intense forms has been linked with poor psychosocial outcomes, including depression and suicide. In the present study we investigated whether individual differences in sensitivity to relational aggression among adolescent girls predicted recruitment of neural networks associated with executive function and cognitive control. Neural response was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging during an affect recognition task that included unfamiliar peer faces. A finding of relatively fewer reports of being victimized by relational aggression was associated with increased recruitment of bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortices as well as anterior and posterior cingulate cortices in response to the affect recognition task, as well as with greater competence on behavioral measures of executive function. Our results suggest that girls who are able to recruit specific frontal networks to improve cognitive and executive control are less sensitive to relational aggression.
Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to Tammy Moran and all other members of the Dartmouth Brain Imaging Center (DBIC) for their hard work and input throughout all phases of this project. We are also deeply indebted to Jane C. Viner for her help with the preparation of this manuscript. This work was supported in part by a grant (awarded to AAB) from the NICHD; contract grant number: R03 HD45742-01A1.