Affective and Cognitive Decision-Making in Adolescents

Abstract

Adolescents demonstrate impaired decision-making in emotionally arousing situations, yet they appear to exhibit relatively mature decision-making skills in predominately cognitive, low-arousal situations. In this study we compared adolescents' (13–15 years) performance on matched affective and cognitive decision-making tasks, in order to determine (1) their performance level on each task and (2) whether performance on the cognitive task was associated with performance on the affective task. Both tasks required a comparison of choice dimensions characterized by frequency of loss, amount of loss, and constant gain. Results indicated that in the affective task, adolescents performed sub-optimally by considering only the frequency of loss, whereas in the cognitive task adolescents used relatively mature decision rules by considering two or all three choice dimensions. Performance on the affective task was not related to performance on the cognitive task. These results are discussed in light of neural developmental trajectories observed in adolescence.

Notes

1. Nine adolescents did not complete the Raven SPM due to absence or procedural errors.

2. Thirteen adolescents did not complete the HDT due to class absence.

3. Four adolescents did not complete the GMT due to class absence.