Adolescents 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.
