Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Aug 2;16(8):e0255102. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255102. eCollection 2021.
Adolescents take more risks than adults in the real world, but laboratory experiments do not consistently demonstrate this pattern. In the current study, we examine the possibility that age differences in decision making vary as a function of the nature of the task (e.g., how information about risk is learned) and contextual features of choices (e.g., the relative favorability of choice outcomes), due to age differences in psychological constructs and physiological processes related to choice (e.g., weighting of rare probabilities, sensitivity to expected value, sampling, pupil dilation). Adolescents and adults made the same 24 choices between risky and safe options twice: once based on descriptions of each option, and once based on experience gained from sampling the options repeatedly. We systematically varied contextual features of options, facilitating a fine-grained analysis of age differences in response to these features. Eye-tracking and experience-sampling measures allowed tests of age differences in predecisional processes. Results in adolescent and adult participants were similar in several respects, including mean risk-taking rates and eye-gaze patterns. However, adolescents' and adults' choice behavior and process measures varied as a function of decision context. Surprisingly, age differences were most pronounced in description, with only marginal differences in experience. Results suggest that probability weighting, expected-value sensitivity, experience sampling and pupil dilation patterns may change with age. Overall, results are consistent with the notion that adolescents are more prone than adults to take risks when faced with unlikely but costly negative outcomes, and broadly point to complex interactions between multiple psychological constructs that develop across adolescence.
青少年在现实世界中比成年人承担更多的风险，但实验室实验并不总是能证明这种模式。在当前的研究中，我们考察了这样一种可能性，即决策中的年龄差异可能随着任务的性质（例如，关于风险的信息是如何学习的）和选择的上下文特征（例如，选择结果的相对有利性）而变化，这是由于与选择相关的心理结构和生理过程的年龄差异（例如，稀有概率的权重、对预期价值的敏感性、抽样、瞳孔扩张）。青少年和成年人两次对风险和安全选项进行了相同的 24 次选择：一次是基于对每个选项的描述，另一次是基于从选项中反复采样获得的经验。我们系统地改变了选项的上下文特征，从而可以对这些特征的年龄差异进行精细分析。眼动跟踪和经验采样测量允许测试决策前过程中的年龄差异。青少年和成年参与者的结果在几个方面相似，包括平均风险承担率和眼球注视模式。然而，青少年和成年人的选择行为和过程测量随着决策背景的变化而变化。令人惊讶的是，年龄差异在描述中最为明显，而在经验中只有微小的差异。结果表明，概率加权、预期价值敏感性、经验抽样和瞳孔扩张模式可能随年龄而变化。总的来说，结果与青少年在面对不太可能但代价高昂的负面结果时比成年人更倾向于冒险的观点一致，并广泛指向在青春期发展的多个心理结构之间复杂的相互作用。
