Development of Dynamic Risky Decision Making: Behavioral Phenomena and Neural Underpinnings

青少年容易冒风险，导致交通事故、性传播疾病感染或药物滥用水平上升。这项拟议的研究调查了导致这种冒险行为的神经机制，目前人们还不太清楚这一点。最近的研究表明，情感/情绪过程可能对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至关重要。行为和大脑激活(fMRI中的BOLD)数据，以调查不同形式的动态和静态决策情况如何影响儿童、青少年和成年人的情感处理模式和深思熟虑处理模式的参与以及冒险水平。需要检验的一个主要假设是，动态选择情境比静态选择情境更能触发情感加工，静态选择情境主要触发深思熟虑的加工。第二个假设是，青少年比儿童和成年人更容易冒更大的风险，因为他们的思考性和情感系统的成熟率不同，这导致青少年更多地依赖情感处理来做出决定。此外，一项基于互联网的大型研究将把我们调查的年龄范围扩大到中老年人，以便调查动态冒险行为的后期发展变化，有效地在整个生命周期内进行研究。更好地理解冒险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。更好地理解情绪性和审慎性决策过程的触发情景特征以及不同的作用和相互作用，可以导致制定政策和干预措施，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景特征会导致他们承担危险的风险。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。

Adolescents are prone to take risks that result in elevated levels of traffic accidents, infections from sexually transmitted diseases, or substance abuse. The proposed research investigates neural mechanisms that give rise to such risk-taking behavior, which are currently not well understood. Recent research has proposed that affective/emotional processes might be crucial to better understanding risk taking in adolescents and other individuals known to seek risks, such as substance abusers or pathological gamblers. Behavioral and brain activation (BOLD in fMRI) data to investigate how different forms of dynamic versus static decision-making situations influence the involvement of affective versus deliberative modes of processing and the levels of risk taking in children, adolescents, and adults. One primary hypothesis to be tested is that dynamic choice situations trigger affective processing more than static choice situations, which trigger predominantly deliberative processing. A second hypothesis is that adolescents are prone to take greater risks than children and adults because of differences in the maturation rates of their deliberative and affective systems, differences that result in teens relying more on affective processing to make decisions. In addition, a large internet-based study will extend the age range of our investigation to middle-aged and older-aged adults in order to investigate later developmental changes in dynamic risk taking, studying it effectively across the life span.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 processes can lead to policies and interventions that help people make better decisions in everyday life. For example, at-risk individuals can be helped to learn what situational 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.