Harm avoidance in adolescents modulates late positive potentials during affective picture processing

• Harm avoidance (HA) negatively predicted late positive potential (LPP) for positive pictures.
• HA in adolescents positively predicted LPP for negative but not for neutral pictures.
• High- and low-HA adolescents exhibit dissociable attention to negative and positive pictures.
• HA in adolescents modulates the late selective attention in affective processing.

Research in adults has shown that individual differences in harm avoidance (HA) modulate electrophysiological responses to affective stimuli. To determine whether HA in adolescents modulates affective information processing, we collected event-related potentials from 70 adolescents while they viewed 90 pictures from the Chinese affective picture system. Multiple regressions revealed that HA negatively predicted late positive potential (LPP) for positive pictures and positively predicted for negative pictures; however, HA did not correlate with LPP for neutral pictures. The results suggest that at the late evaluative stage, high-HA adolescents display attentional bias to negative pictures while low-HA adolescents display attentional bias to negative pictures. Moreover, these dissociable attentional patterns imply that individual differences in adolescents’ HA modulate the late selective attention mechanism of affective information.