Adolescent neurodevelopment of cognitive control and risk-taking in negative family contexts

Abstract

Adolescents have an increased need to regulate their behavior as they gain access to opportunities for risky behavior; however, cognitive control systems necessary for this regulation remain relatively immature. Parents can impact their adolescent child's abilities to regulate their behavior and engagement in risk taking. Since adolescents undergo significant neural change, negative parent-child relationship quality may impede or alter development in prefrontal regions subserving cognitive control. To test this hypothesis, 20 adolescents completed a go/nogo task during two fMRI scans occurring 1 year apart. Adolescents reporting greater family conflict and lower family cohesion showed longitudinal increases in risk-taking behavior, which was mediated by longitudinal increases in left VLPFC activation during cognitive control. These results underscore the importance of parent-child relationships during early adolescence, and the neural processes by which cognitive control may be derailed and lead to increased risk taking.

Family conflict shapes how adolescents take risks when their family is affected

“…These findings are noteworthy because they not only highlight how social influences do not exert uniform effects on behaviors but that they depend on the quality of the relationship. Similar to previous work examining how family and peer conflict impact adolescents' risk taking when it affects only the adolescent (McCormick et al., ; Telzer et al., ), we found that individuals who report high levels of family conflict were more likely to make a risky decision; however, this time at the expense of their parents. Conversely, individuals who report lower family conflict were less likely to make risky decisions when their parents were affected.…”

Family conflict is associated with longitudinal changes in insular‐striatal functional connectivity during adolescent risk taking under maternal influence

“…Participants were asked to indicate how often on a 5‐point scale they fight, disagree, or argue with their parents (1 = “Almost Never” to 5 = “Almost Always”; e.g., “You and your parents ignored each other”). This scale has been utilized to measure family conflict in developmental samples, and its link to risk‐taking behavior (e.g., Telzer, Gonzales, & Fuligni, ), and neural development (McCormick et al., ). The measure has excellent reliability in our sample (α = 0.94).…”

The neuroscience of emotion regulation development: implications for education

“…Such social forms of regulation – which clearly are important – have seen little neuroscience research, although interest in them is growing (See, e.g. Reeck, Ames & Ochsner, 2016, and [39]) and related research on the interaction of social cognition and emotion during development is emerging [24,46]. While to date, there are no imaging studies directly examining how other people can help us reappraise – across development or in adults, studies examining other forms of social regulation are beginning to emerge [45,47].…”