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

青少年容易冒险，导致交通事故增加、性传播疾病感染或滥用药物。这项拟议的研究调查了导致这种冒险行为的神经机制，目前还没有得到很好的理解。最近的研究提出，情感/情绪过程可能对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）的风险行为至关重要。行为和大脑激活（fMRI中的BOLD）数据用于研究不同形式的动态和静态决策情境如何影响儿童、青少年和成人的情感和慎重处理模式的参与以及风险承担水平。需要验证的一个主要假设是，动态选择情境比静态选择情境更能触发情感处理，而静态选择情境主要触发慎重处理。第二种假设是，青少年比儿童和成人更倾向于承担更大的风险，因为他们的深思熟虑和情感系统的成熟速度不同，这种差异导致青少年更多地依赖情感处理来做决定。此外，一项基于互联网的大型研究将把我们的调查年龄范围扩大到中老年成年人，以调查动态冒险行为的后期发展变化，在整个生命周期中有效地研究它。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。更好地了解触发情境特征以及情感和审议决策过程的不同作用和相互作用，可以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体了解哪些情境特征会导致他们冒危险。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。

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.