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

儿童、青少年和成年人的情感和深思熟虑的危险决策众所周知，青少年承担的风险可能会导致交通事故、性传播疾病感染或药物滥用。这项拟议的研究为研究导致这种冒险行为的神经机制奠定了基础，目前人们对这种冒险行为还不太清楚。最近的研究表明，情感/情绪过程和体验式学习(即从个人经历中学习)可能是更好地理解青少年和其他已知的寻求风险的个人，如药物滥用者或病态赌徒的冒险行为的关键。我们将使用行为和生理(皮肤电导和心率)数据来调查学习与风险相关的信息是如何经验性地影响风险承担的。我们假设，与分析性学习相反，经验性学习会触发情绪性决策，而分析性学习主要会触发深思熟虑的决策。我们认为，青少年比儿童和成人更容易冒更大的风险，因为当两个系统都被触发时，青少年更依赖于他们的情感处理系统，而不是更受控制的深思熟虑系统。这笔拨款将进一步允许我们利用脑成像技术(FMRI)进行试点研究。这些先导性研究将使我们能够提交一项关于情感和思考性信息处理以及经验性学习和分析性学习在儿童、青少年和成年人风险承担中的作用的一系列fMRI研究的提案。更好地理解风险承担和风险决策的行为和神经机制将有助于制定更好的预防和干预策略。这些战略可以针对青少年高危人群和其他在危险决策方面存在缺陷的人群，包括药物滥用者和病态赌徒。更好地理解情绪化和深思熟虑决策的触发情景特征以及不同的作用和相互作用，有助于制定政策，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承担危险风险。在更广泛的层面上，人们可以接受培训，在他们的决策中更好地将情感反应和深思熟虑的反应结合起来。政策制定者可以学习如何传达风险，并以一种触发两种决策过程的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.