Perception of pro- and antisocial behavior by children: modulations of EEG alpha and beta rhythms

V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, 295007 Simferopol, Russia

^* Corresponding author: vpav55@gmail.com

Abstract

The paper surveys the behavior and psychophysiological responses (electroencephalographic power modulations of the alpha and beta rhythms) in 16 boys and 33 girls aged from 1.5 to 3.5 years when they were distributing reward tokens (carton cookies) among the toy characters who previously demonstrated proand antisocial behavior (rendering help and causing harm, respectively). The individual way of distributing the reward was translated into a moral evaluation index (MEI) for each child. When children were distributing the reward tokens, an increase in power, relative to the baseline, was registered for theta rhythm in the prefrontal, frontal and occipital cortex regions, and for beta rhythm in the temporal and occipital regions. Besides, those children who tended to give a bigger reward to the good-acting toy character (i.e., having higher MEI) showed a significantly greater increase in beta rhythm power compared to the children with lower MEI. The reason for that might be that children with higher MEI engage their cognitive resources into making socially significant decisions more effectively and adequately process emotionally significant information.