Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Deciding in the Dark--Developmental Differences between Adolescents and Adults in Unconscious Decision-Making

人们普遍认为，青少年的决策能力较差。 在驾车、吸毒和犯罪方面，青少年比成年人更有可能做出将自己和他人置于危险境地的选择。 试图用风险判断的缺陷来解释这一现象的努力在很大程度上都失败了。 在一项又一项的研究中，青少年似乎和成年人一样有能力估计风险，并承认他们对风险的脆弱性，但是，如果青少年和成年人一样有能力识别风险，那么为什么他们会比成年人做出更危险的行为？ 在这篇博士论文改进提案中，共同PI概述了测试涉及决策无意识方面的替代假设的研究。具体而言，共同PI概述了旨在测试以下假设的实验：（a）青少年的无意识决策过程对奖励更敏感，对成本的敏感度低于年龄较大和较年轻的个体;（B）当奖励具有社会性质时，对奖励和成本敏感度的年龄差异会被放大。将对400名年龄从10岁到30岁的人进行三项计算机化决策任务。 任务使用时间压力，复杂的信息，和干扰有意识的认知来评估无意识的风险评估。 通过比较青少年前、青少年和成年个体的反应，本研究将能够识别青少年无意识风险判断中可能影响其行为的缺陷和偏见。 这项研究有可能挑战当前的发展理论，并告知政策制定者有关青少年风险行为的驱动机制。 此外，调查结果可用于告知当前关于青少年权利和责任的讨论，这些权利和责任取决于他们的决策能力，如刑事罪责，医疗决定，知情同意和投票权。

It is widely recognized that adolescents exhibit poor decision-making. With regard to driving, drugs, and crime, adolescents are more likely than adults to make choices that place themselves and others in harm's way. Efforts to explain this phenomenon in terms of deficits in risk judgment have largely failed. In study after study, adolescents appear to be as capable as adults of both estimating risk and acknowledging their vulnerability to it. But, if adolescents are as capable as adults of recognizing risk, why then do they engage in more risky behavior than adults? In this Doctoral Dissertation Improvement proposal the co-PI outlines research to test an alternative hypothesis involving unconscious aspects of decision-making. Specifically, the co-PI outlines experiments designed to test the hypotheses that (a) adolescents' unconscious decisional processes are more sensitive to reward and less sensitive to cost than those of older and younger individuals; and (b) that these age differences in sensitivity to reward and cost are amplified when rewards are social in nature. Three computerized decision-making tasks will be administered to 400 individuals ranging in age from 10 to 30 years old. The tasks use time pressure, complex information, and interference with conscious cognition to assess unconscious risk evaluation. By comparing the responses of preadolescent, adolescent and adult individuals, the study will be able to identify deficits and biases in adolescents' unconscious risk judgments that may influence their behavior. The proposed study has the potential to challenge current developmental theory and to inform policy-makers about the mechanisms driving risky behavior in adolescence. In addition, the findings may be used to inform current discourse about rights and responsibilities for adolescents that hinge on their decision-making capacities, such as criminal culpability, medical decisions, informed consent, and the right to vote.