It has been hypothesized that sensation seeking and impulsivity, which are often conflated, in fact develop along different timetables and have different neural underpinnings, and that the difference in their timetables helps account for heightened risk taking during adolescence. In order to test these propositions, the authors examined age differences in sensation seeking and impulsivity in a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of 935 individuals between the ages of 10 and 30, using self-report and behavioral measures of each construct. Consistent with the authors' predictions, age differences in sensation seeking, which are linked to pubertal maturation, follow a curvilinear pattern, with sensation seeking increasing between 10 and 15 and declining or remaining stable thereafter. In contrast, age differences in impulsivity, which are unrelated to puberty, follow a linear pattern, with impulsivity declining steadily from age 10 on. Heightened vulnerability to risk taking in middle adolescence may be due to the combination of relatively higher inclinations to seek excitement and relatively immature capacities for self-control that are typical of this period of development.

The presence of peers increases risk taking among adolescents but not adults. We posited that the presence of peers may promote adolescent risk taking by sensitizing brain regions associated with the anticipation of potential rewards. Using fMRI, we measured brain activity in adolescents, young adults, and adults as they made decisions in a simulated driving task. Participants completed one task block while alone, and one block while their performance was observed by peers in an adjacent room. During peer observation blocks, adolescents selectively demonstrated greater activation in reward-related brain regions, including the ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex, and activity in these regions predicted subsequent risk taking. Brain areas associated with cognitive control were less strongly recruited by adolescents than adults, but activity in the cognitive control system did not vary with social context. Results suggest that the presence of peers increases adolescent risk taking by heightening sensitivity to the potential reward value of risky decisions.

In this article, we review the most important findings to have emerged during the past ten years in the study of judgment and decision making (JDM) in adolescence and look ahead to possible new directions in this burgeoning area of research. Three interrelated shifts in research emphasis are of particular importance, and serve to organize this review. First, research grounded in normative models of JDM has moved beyond the study of age differences in risk perception and toward a dynamic account of the factors predicting adolescent decisions. Second, the field has seen widespread adoption of dual-process models of cognitive development that describe two relatively independent modes of information processing, typically contrasting an analytic ("cold") system with an experiential ("hot") one. Finally, there has been an increase in attention to the social, emotional, and self-regulatory factors that influence JDM. This shift in focus reflects the growing influence of findings from developmental neuroscience, which describe a pattern of structural and functional maturation that may set the stage for a heightened propensity to make risky decisions in adolescence. ADOLESCENT JDM 3 Judgment and Decision Making in AdolescenceImagine, for a moment, that you are sixteen years old. It is the spring of your sophomore year of high school, and you feel a newfound sense of optimism about your social prospects. Best of all, it's Friday night and you are ready to take advantage of your recently renegotiated curfew, now extended to 11 p.m. When pressed for your plans, you tell your parents that you're just going to the movies and then maybe hanging out at the coffee shop: No need to worry. In reality, you know that when your friends pick you up, you will head straight to the first big keg party to which you've ever been invited.Everyone will be there. But you'll have to be careful, because these things get busted by the cops all the time, not to mention the fact that your parents will be waiting up for you when you get home. You aren't really planning on drinking at the party, but if you do, you'll definitely need some breath mints and a believable horror movie synopsis. That should be easy enough.We begin our review with this exercise in creative visualization not to inspire fear and suspicion in those among our readers charged with parenting a teenager, but to illustrate the multitude of factors that dynamically shape adolescents' choices. On this one weekend evening, our hypothetical teenager will make a series of choices with potentially lasting consequences for his health, safety, criminal record, family relationships, and social status. These decisions are likely to be influenced not only by his capacity to accurately evaluate the relative costs and benefits of alternative courses of action, but also the social and emotional contexts in which he makes the decisions -the mix of excitement and anxiety he brings to the party, his in-the-moment assessment of ADOLESCENT JDM 4 social expectations, and his background fear o...

Research efforts to account for elevated risk behavior among adolescents have arrived at an exciting new stage. Moving beyond laboratory studies of age differences in “cool” cognitive processes related to risk perception and reasoning, new approaches have shifted focus to the influence of social and emotional factors on adolescent neurocognition. We review recent research suggesting that adolescent risk-taking propensity derives in part from a maturational gap between early adolescent remodeling of the brain's socio-emotional reward system and a gradual, prolonged strengthening of the cognitive control system. At a time when adolescents spend an increasing amount of time with their peers, research suggests that peer-related stimuli may sensitize the reward system to respond to the reward value of risky behavior. As the cognitive control system gradually matures over the course of the teenage years, adolescents grow in their capacity to coordinate affect and cognition, and to exercise self-regulation even in emotionally arousing situations. These capacities are reflected in gradual growth in the capacity to resist peer influence.