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

儿童、青少年和成人的情感性和慎重性风险决策众所周知，青少年喜欢冒险，这可能导致交通事故、性传播疾病感染或药物滥用。这项提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，而这种机制目前还没有得到很好的理解。最近的研究提出，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寻求风险的个体（如药物滥用者或病态赌徒）的风险行为的关键。我们将使用行为和生理（皮肤电导和心率）数据来研究经验式和分析式学习风险相关信息对风险承担的影响。我们假设，体验式学习触发情感决策，而不是分析式学习，后者主要触发深思熟虑的决策。我们假设，青少年比儿童和成人更倾向于承担更大的风险，因为当两个系统都被触发时，他们更依赖于他们的情感处理系统，而不是更受控制的审议系统。这项拨款将进一步支持我们进行脑成像技术（fMRI）的试点研究。这些试点研究将使我们能够提交一系列关于情感与审慎信息处理的功能磁共振成像研究的建议，以及在儿童、青少年和成人的风险承担中，实验性与分析性学习的作用。更好地了解风险承担和风险决策背后的行为和神经机制将有助于制定更好的预防和干预策略。这些策略可以针对青少年高危人群和其他在风险决策方面有缺陷的人群，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决策和审议决策的不同作用和相互作用，可以制定帮助人们在日常生活中做出更好决策的政策。例如，可以帮助处于危险中的个体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，人们可以接受训练，在决策中更好地整合情感反应和深思熟虑反应。政策制定者可以学习如何沟通风险，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.