Academic Unit of Psychology, University of Southampton, Building 44, Southampton, UK.
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2018 Sep;27(9):1133-1142. doi: 10.1007/s00787-017-1024-9. Epub 2017 Jul 7.
Altered decision making processes and excessive risk-seeking behaviours are key features of conduct disorder (CD). Previous studies have provided compelling evidence of abnormally increased preference for risky options, higher sensitivity to rewards, as well as blunted responsiveness to aversive outcomes in adolescents with CD. However, most studies published to date have focused on males only; thus, it is not known whether females with CD show similar alterations in decision making. The current study investigated potential sex differences in decision making and risk-seeking behaviours in adolescents with CD. Forty-nine adolescents with CD (23 females) and 51 control subjects (27 females), aged 11-18 years, performed a computerised task assessing decision making under risk-the Risky Choice Task. Participants made a series of decisions between two gamble options that varied in terms of their expected values and probability of gains and losses. This enabled the participants' risk preferences to be determined. Taking the sample as a whole, adolescents with CD exhibited increased risk-seeking behaviours compared to healthy controls. However, we found a trend towards a sex-by-group interaction, suggesting that these effects may vary by sex. Follow-up analyses showed that males with CD made significantly more risky choices than their typically developing counterparts, while females with CD did not differ from typically developing females in their risk-seeking behaviours. Our results provide preliminary evidence that sex may moderate the relationship between CD and alterations in risk attitudes and reward processing, indicating that there may be sex differences in the developmental pathways and neuropsychological deficits that lead to CD.
行为障碍（CD）的主要特征是决策过程改变和过度冒险行为。先前的研究提供了令人信服的证据，表明 CD 青少年对风险选项的偏好异常增加，对奖励的敏感性更高，对厌恶结果的反应迟钝。然而，迄今为止发表的大多数研究都只关注男性；因此，尚不清楚 CD 女性是否表现出类似的决策改变。本研究调查了 CD 青少年在决策和冒险行为方面的潜在性别差异。49 名 CD 青少年（23 名女性）和 51 名对照受试者（27 名女性），年龄在 11-18 岁之间，完成了一项评估风险下决策的计算机任务——风险选择任务。参与者在两个赌博选项之间进行一系列决策，这些选项在其预期值和收益与损失的概率方面有所不同。这使参与者的风险偏好得以确定。总体而言，CD 青少年的冒险行为比健康对照组增加。然而，我们发现存在性别-组别相互作用的趋势，表明这些影响可能因性别而异。后续分析表明，CD 男性比其正常发育的同龄人做出了更多的冒险选择，而 CD 女性在冒险行为上与正常发育的女性没有差异。我们的结果提供了初步证据，表明性别可能调节 CD 与风险态度和奖励处理改变之间的关系，表明 CD 可能存在导致 CD 的性别差异发展途径和神经心理学缺陷。
