The Influence Of Reward Sensitivity And Risky Behavior On Adolescent Decision-making

In the past decade,the development characteristics and influencing factors of decision-making have aroused widespread concern of scholars at home and abroad.However,from the existing research results,there are still some problems.First,with regard to the decision-making performance of adolescents at different stages,some researchers believe that individuals have the ability to make superior decisions in early adolescence,but some researchers believe that decision-making ability is only available in later adolescents.This study suggests that the possible reasons are:(1)the age division of the subjects;(2)the paradigm of gambling tasks is different.Second,most studies have not reached a consistent conclusion when investigating the effects of reward sensitivity and risk-taking behavior on decision-making.Adolescence is the peak period of reward sensitivity and risk-taking behavior.At present,there is only one developmental study that shows the influence of reward sensitivity on decision-making,without investigating the impact of risk-taking behavior on adolescent decision-making.This study designed two experiments to solve the problems in previous studies.In Study 1,118 adolescents aged 12-17 were selected to complete the adapted Iowa game task and explore the decision-making performance of adolescents of different ages.In Study 2,two groups of subjects were selected: the adolescent group and the adult group.All the participants completed the adapted Iowa game task,the behavior activation / behavior inhibition system scale(BAS / BIS),and the simulation balloon simulation.Risky task(BART)and risk behavior scale(ARQ-RB).turn out:(1)There is a significant difference in the performance of decision-making tasks for adolescents aged 12-17 years,and individuals have the ability to make superior decisions in early adolescents.Among the adapted IGT missions,14-to 15-year-olds performed best,followed by 12-to 13-year-olds,and 16-to 17-year-olds performed the worst.The study also found that teenagers tend to choose cards with a low frequency of loss,with a significant "B card effect."(2)The impact of reward sensitivity on adolescent decision-making.In the juvenile group,reward sensitivity was significantly negatively correlated with the overall performance of IGT,and there was a significant negative correlation only at the risk stage of IGT.In the adult group,no correlation was found between reward sensitivity and IGT.The results of regression analysis showed that the higher the score of reward sensitivity,the worse the performance of adolescents in decision-making tasks.(3)The impact of risk-taking behaviors on adolescent decision-making.There was no correlation between BART and IGT performance in the two groups of subjects.There was a significant negative correlation between the total score of risk behaviors and the overall performance of IGT in the youth group,and a significant negative correlation with the total score of risk behaviors at the risk stage of IGT,especially the stimulus seeking dimension.The adult group did not find a correlation between risky behavior and IGT.The results of regression analysis showed that the higher the risk behavior score,the worse the decision-making performance of the adolescent.In summary,this study believes that individuals in early adolescents(12-13 years old)already have the ability to make superior decisions,have the best decision-making ability in the middle of adolescence,and have the worst decision-making performance in the late adolescence,indicating that during the integration of adolescence The development of decision-making capabilities is not linear.In addition,this study also found that poor decision-making performance in the late teens is related to high reward sensitivity and high risk-taking behavior during this period.