Influences Of Peer And Reward Outcomes On Adolescent Risk-taking Behavior

Adolescence is the important period to the individual development and maturation. Peers as teenagers' important others in social relations, has important influence on adolescent risk-taking behavior. Dual Systems Model highlights that peers may activate the reward system, so the adolescent are sensitive to reward. And then they become impulsive and result in more risk-taking behaviors. However,previous researches have found that studies about of the influences of peers and reward outcomes on adolescents' risk-taking behavior have made a wealth of research findings, but research on the neurophysiological mechanisms is still relatively scarce,and mostly used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging( fMRI). Since the temporal resolution of fMRI is poor, cannot provide the precise duration of adolescent risk-taking behavior and the influences of peers and reward outcomes on adolescents' risk-taking behavior. Thus, to make up for the lack of previous researches, this study on the basis of the dual system theory, preliminary study the neurophysiological mechanisms of the influences of peers and reward outcomes on adolescents' risk-taking behavior by means of ERP technology, the findings show that:(1) Although the sample size of ERP experiment is small, the BART values and the numbers of balloon explosion of two experiments were not significant difference,but descriptive statistics show that compared with no peer present, the presence of peer make young people have a tendency to be more risk-taking; compared with one peer present, the presence of three peers make adolescent tendency to have more risk-taking behaviors.(2) Compared to no peer present, the presence of a peer makes adolescent's engaging in risk-taking behavior evoked greater N1 amplitude; relative to the presence of a peers, evoked N1 amplitude the presence of three peer evoked greater N1 amplitude.(3) Compared to no peer present, when one peer present, balloon explosion induced N1 amplitude is greater; in the case of one peer present, balloon explosion evoked N1 amplitude was significantly greater than reward receipt induced N1 amplitude.(4) Compared to no peer present, the presence of a peer makes adolescent's engaging in risk-taking behavior evoked greater P2 amplitude; the presence of three peers evoked P2 amplitude is greater than the presence of a peer induced P2 amplitude, the presence of three peers makes teenagers have more risk-taking behaviors.(5) Compared to no peer present, balloon explosion induced P2 amplitude was significantly greater when one peer present; as the same, in the presence of a peer,reward receipt induced P2 amplitude was significantly greater than no peer present reward receipt induced P2 amplitude; balloon explosion induced P2 amplitude greater was greater than reward receipt induced P2 amplitude.