Two-year stability of the late positive potential across middle childhood and adolescence

• Examined two-year stability of the LPP to emotional images in youth.
• The LPP is a moderately reliable measure of emotional reactivity across development.
• Behavioral measures of emotional interference are less consistently reliable.
• Reductions in activation over occipital sites were observed across development.

The late positive potential (LPP) may be a useful measure of individual differences in emotional processing across development, but little is known about the stability of the LPP across time. We assessed the LPP and behavioral measures of emotional interference following pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral images in 8- to 13-year-old youth. Approximately two years later, the same participants completed the task again (N = 34). Results indicated that the LPP is moderately-to-highly reliable across development. Stability was lower and more inconsistent for behavioral measures. In addition, consistent with previous cross-sectional analyses, a decrease in occipital activity was observed at the second assessment. Results indicate that the LPP appears to be a stable measure of emotional processing, even across a fairly large period of development.