Adolescents sample more information prior to decisions than adults when effort costs increase.

Abstract

Making better decisions typically requires obtaining information relevant to that decision. Adolescence is marked by increasing agency in decision-making and an accompanying increase in impulsive decisions, suggesting that one characteristic of adolescent decision-making is a tendency to make less-informed decisions. Adolescents could also be especially averse to the effort associated with acquiring relevant information to make decisions. To investigate this possibility, we recruited adolescents (M age = 15.02 years) in upper-secondary schools and young adults (M age = 20.53 years) attending university in the Netherlands to complete an effort-based information sampling task, in which participants could sample information until obtaining sufficient evidence to make a decision. Effort costs for sampling were systematically varied. Surprisingly, adolescents sampled more evidence than adults before making decisions when sampling effort costs were low. Further, adolescents obtained stronger evidence prior to their decisions than adults as effort costs increased, exhibiting less aversion to effort costs associated with information sampling. Exploratory computational models supported these findings. Both adolescents and adults used simple heuristics in deciding whether to sample additional information or make a final decision, and adolescents sought a higher evidence threshold before deciding compared with adults. These results suggest that adolescents may require more certainty to make decisions compared with adults and be less averse to effort costs when gathering information to aid decisions.

Internal uncertainty impacts social information use in risky choice across adolescence

“…A crucial difference between the current and previous studies is that previously, uncertainty was either description-based 45,72 , or required exploration or trial-and-error learning 45,[73][74][75] . Opposed to previous experiments, but like many situations in real-life 77 , our participants took risks under uncertainty but could not "look before they leap", and did not get instant feedback about the outcomes of their choice, eliminating confounds such as developmental differences in feedback processing or exploration.…”

“…This is at odds with previous studies in which adolescents took more risks under uncertainty than adults 45,[72][73][74] . More recent research showed that adolescents require more information than adults before making a choice 75 , implying uncertainty aversion is a more complex phenomenon than previously thought. However, no earlier study could quantify the state of uncertainty their participants is in.…”

Social learning across adolescence: A Bayesian neurocognitive perspective

“…In line with these results, a later study found that adolescents are more accepting of uncertainty and ambiguity than children and adults, which was again related to self-reported real-life risk taking, whereas risk aversion declined monotonically over age and was not related to real-life risk taking ( van den Bos and Hertwig, 2017 ). These results suggest that the often observed increase in risk engagement in adolescents is due to an increased willingness to gamble when they lack complete knowledge, rather than increased risk-taking per se (but see Niebaum et al, 2022 ). This reduced ambiguity aversion might well be adaptive during adolescence, because adolescents relatively often find themselves in new, uncertain environments, in which behavior that promotes exploration can boost learning ( Ciranka and van den Bos, 2021a ).…”

“…These weaker priors or more uncertain expectations in adolescents compared with adults might lead to further information seeking to resolve this uncertainty. A recent study found that, using an effort-based information sampling task, adolescents sampled more information than young adults before reaching a decision ( Niebaum et al, 2022 ). Taking this to the social domain by using a risky decision paradigm in which uncertainty and the presence of social information were manipulated, Ciranka and van den Bos found that young adults used the choices of others to a larger extent when they were more uncertain ( Ciranka and van den Bos, 2020 ).…”

Adolescents seek social information under uncertainty.

“…Search behavior for nonsocial information has been studied in adolescents using different types of experimental designs with mixed findings. The study of van den Bos and Hertwig (2017) suggests that adolescents search less for objective information compared with adults and children, while another recent study showed that adolescents searched more information compared with adults (Niebaum et al, 2022). In contrast, Somerville et al (2017) did not find quantitative differences in exploration behavior, but qualitative differences between adolescents and adults.…”