Participants

Participants were 18 Chinese adolescents and 22 Chinese adults. Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood. Adolescence usually referred to teenage years²⁹. Participants were recruited via fliers that invited healthy volunteers to participate in studies of emotion that were distributed in two junior middle schools and one university. Before participating in the study, adolescent participants, parents of the adolescent participants, and adult participants were thoroughly introduced to the experiment and written informed consents were taken. All subjects were financially compensated for participation (100 China Yuan). The research protocol was approved by the Institutional Reviewing Board, East China Normal University. Experiments were performed in accordance with scientific research guidelines and regulations. Data from 5 participants were excluded due to noisy EEG recordings. The final sample consisted of 17 adolescents (10 male, 7 female; M = 13.29, SD = 0.47) and 18 adults (10 male, 8 female; M = 23.78, SD = 2.41). All of the participants came from urban communities. In the sample, 47.1% of the adolescents and 38.9% of the adults were the only child of their parents; others had one or more siblings. Approximately 64.7% of fathers and 58.8% of mothers in the adolescent group, and 55.6% of fathers and 55.5% of the mothers in the adults group had received a college education. Other parents had received an education of high school or lower. All participants were in good neurological and psychiatric condition. No participant had a history of neurological or psychiatric disorder, determined by self and/or parent report.