Affective and Deliberative Risky Decision Making in Children, Adolescents, and Adults

儿童、青少年和成人的情感和深思熟虑的风险决策众所周知，青少年会冒险，这可能导致交通事故、性传播疾病感染或药物滥用。这项研究为研究引起这种冒险行为的神经机制奠定了基础，目前还没有很好地理解。最近的研究提出，情感/情绪过程和经验学习（即，从个人经历中学习）可能是更好地了解青少年和其他已知寻求风险的个人（如药物滥用者或病态赌徒）冒险行为的关键。我们将使用行为和生理（皮肤电导和心率）数据来研究如何学习风险相关的信息经验与分析影响冒险。我们假设，体验式学习触发情感决策，而不是分析性学习，主要触发审议决策。我们假设，青少年倾向于采取更大的风险比儿童和成人，由于更依赖于他们的情感处理系统的控制审议系统时，这两个系统被触发。这笔赠款将进一步使我们能够利用脑成像技术（fMRI）进行试点研究。这些初步研究将为进一步开展儿童、青少年和成年人风险行为的fMRI研究提供参考，并为进一步研究儿童、青少年和成年人风险行为和风险决策的行为和神经机制提供理论依据。这些策略可以针对青少年高危人群和其他缺乏风险决策的人群，包括药物滥用者和病态赌徒。更好地理解触发情境特征以及情感和深思熟虑决策的不同作用和相互作用，可以帮助人们在日常生活中做出更好的决策。例如，可以帮助处于危险中的个人了解什么情况特征导致他们冒危险的风险。在更广泛的层面上，人们可以接受培训，以便在决策中更好地整合情感和深思熟虑的反应。政策制定者可以学习如何沟通风险，并以一种能够在两种决策过程之间实现最佳平衡的方式描述决策。

Affective and Deliberative Risky Decision Making in Children, Adolescents, and AdultsAdolescents are well known to take risks which can result in traffic accidents, infections from sexually transmitted diseases, or substance abuse. The proposed research lays the groundwork for investigating neural mechanisms that give rise to such risk-taking behavior, which are currently not well understood. Recent research has proposed that affective/emotional processes and experiential learning (i.e., learning from personal experiences) might be a key to a better understanding of risk taking in adolescents and other individuals known to seek risks, such as substance abusers or pathological gamblers. We will use behavioral and physiological (skin conductance and heart rate) data to investigate how learning the risk-relevant information experientially versus analytically influences risk taking. We hypothesize that experiential learning triggers affective decision making as opposed to analytical learning, which triggers predominantly deliberative decision making. We assume that adolescents are prone to take greater risks than children and adults due to greater reliance on their affective processing system over the more controlled deliberative system when both systems are triggered. The grant will further allow us to conduct pilot studies with brain imaging techniques (fMRI). These pilot studies will enable us to submit a proposal for a series of fMRI studies on affective versus deliberative information processing and the role of experiental versus analytical learning in risk taking in children, adolescents, and adults.A better understanding of the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying risk taking and risky decision making will help with the development of better prevention and intervention strategies. These strategies can be targeted at adolescent at-risk populations and other populations with deficits in risky decision making, including substance abusers and pathological gamblers. A better understanding of both the triggering situational characteristics and the differential role and interplay of affective and deliberative decision making can lead to policies that help people make better decisions in everyday life. For example, at-risk individuals can be helped to learn what situation characteristics lead them to take dangerous risks. On a broader level, people can be trained to better integrate affective and deliberative reactions in their decisions. Policy makers can learn how to communicate risks and describe decisions in a way that triggers an optimal balance of the two types of decision processes.