Lozano Wun Vanessa, Klein Samuel D, Collins Paul F, Luciana Monica
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Dev Psychol. 2025 May 5. doi: 10.1037/dev0001969.
The dual systems model of adolescent development asserts that the neurobiological systems underlying reward/motivational processes and cognitive control mature at different rates, resulting in an "imbalance" during adolescence whereby adolescents are biased toward rewards but unable to exert sufficient executive control in risk-taking contexts. While a hypothesized imbalance between these systems is central to the dual systems model, few studies have investigated longitudinal trajectories within and between each system with age. Therefore, this validation study assessed the developmental trajectories of the reward and control systems, and directly quantified within-person differences between these systems using an accelerated longitudinal design, including up to five biennial assessments per participant. The sample included 166 predominately White individuals from middle-class to upper-middle-class backgrounds, aged 9-29 years, of which 54% were female at birth. Results indicate that both self-reported reward sensitivity and laboratory-based executive functions increase rapidly during early adolescence and plateau by early adulthood. Findings provide evidence for a unique period of developmental imbalance with heightened reward sensitivity relative to executive control present in early adolescence and imply that most adolescents demonstrate top-down regulatory control over incentive-reward motivation by mid-to-late adolescence. However, some individuals deviate from this mean-level trend, suggesting that individual differences in neurodevelopment must be considered as important determinants of decision-making in later adolescence. Further research into how developmental differences between reward and control systems relate to decision-making processes, including risk-taking tendencies, is an important future direction for this research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
青少年发展的双系统模型认为，奖励/动机过程和认知控制背后的神经生物学系统以不同的速度成熟，导致青少年时期出现“失衡”，即青少年偏向于奖励，但在冒险情境中无法施加足够的执行控制。虽然这些系统之间假设的失衡是双系统模型的核心，但很少有研究调查每个系统内部以及不同系统之间随年龄变化的纵向轨迹。因此，这项验证性研究评估了奖励系统和控制系统的发展轨迹，并使用加速纵向设计直接量化了这些系统之间的个体内差异，每位参与者最多进行五次两年一次的评估。样本包括166名主要来自中产阶级到中上阶层背景的白人个体，年龄在9至29岁之间，其中54%为出生时的女性。结果表明，自我报告的奖励敏感性和基于实验室的执行功能在青春期早期迅速增加，并在成年早期趋于平稳。研究结果为青春期早期存在相对于执行控制而言奖励敏感性增强的独特发展失衡期提供了证据，并暗示大多数青少年在青春期中后期对激励奖励动机表现出自上而下的调节控制。然而，一些个体偏离了这种平均水平趋势，这表明神经发育的个体差异必须被视为青少年后期决策的重要决定因素。进一步研究奖励系统和控制系统之间的发展差异如何与决策过程相关，包括冒险倾向，是该研究未来的一个重要方向。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2025美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
