Around the world, adolescence is a time of heightened sensation seeking and immature self‐regulation

Steinberg, Laurence; Icenogle, Grace; Shulman, Elizabeth P.; Breiner, Kaitlyn; Chein, Jason; Bacchini, Dario; Chang, Lei; Chaudhary, Nandita; Giunta, Laura Di; Dodge, Kenneth A.; Fanti, Kostas A.; Lansford, Jennifer E.; Malone, Patrick S.; Oburu, Paul; Pastorelli, Concetta; Skinner, Ann T.; Sorbring, Emma; Tapanya, Sombat; Tirado, Liliana Maria Uribe; Alampay, Liane Peña; Al‐Hassan, Suha M.; Takash, Hanan M. S.

doi:10.1111/desc.12532

Cited by 328 publications

(246 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…These data support the hypothesis that early adolescents show less efficient (or less strategic) risk taking (i.e., relatively more exploded balloons), which transforms into a more optimal form of risk taking in late adolescence, as evidenced by relatively larger payoffs (Crone, van Duijvenvoorde, & Peper, ). These findings are consistent with other studies that have suggested a rise in risk‐taking behavior from childhood to midadolescence, especially for “hot” risk‐taking tasks that include affective components of decision making (Burnett et al., ; Figner et al., ; Steinberg et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Development of Multifaceted Risk Taking and the Relations to Sex Steroid Hormones: A Longitudinal Study

et al. 2018

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Risk taking is a multidimensional construct. It is currently unclear which aspects of risk-taking change most during adolescence and if/how sex hormones contribute to risk-taking tendencies. This study applied a longitudinal design with three time-points, separated by 2 years, in participants aged 8-29 years (670 observations). The Balloon Analogue Risk Task, a delay discounting task, and various self-report questionnaires were administered, to measure aspects of risk taking. Longitudinal analyses demonstrated mostly nonlinear age-related patterns in risk-taking behavior and approach-related personality characteristics (peaking in late adolescence). Increased testosterone and estradiol were found to increase risk-taking behavior and impulsive personality, but decrease avoidance-like personality. This study demonstrates that risk taking is most pronounced in mid-to-late adolescence and suggests that sex hormones accelerate this maturational process.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Development of Multifaceted Risk Taking and the Relations to Sex Steroid Hormones: A Longitudinal Study

et al. 2018

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“…In fact, two contrasting developmental patterns characterize adolescence (64,65). On some measures, such as cognitive control, and self-regulation, there is a relatively linear trajectory from childhood through adolescence to adulthood.…”

Section: Continuous Knowledge Acquisition Vs Discontinuous Developmementioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in cognitive flexibility and hypothesis search across human life history from childhood to adolescence to adulthood

Gopnik

O’Grady

Lucas

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

261

216

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How was the evolution of our unique biological life history related to distinctive human developments in cognition and culture? We suggest that the extended human childhood and adolescence allows a balance between exploration and exploitation, between wider and narrower hypothesis search, and between innovation and imitation in cultural learning. In particular, different developmental periods may be associated with different learning strategies. This relation between biology and culture was probably coevolutionary and bidirectional: life-history changes allowed changes in learning, which in turn both allowed and rewarded extended life histories. In two studies, we test how easily people learn an unusual physical or social causal relation from a pattern of evidence. We track the development of this ability from early childhood through adolescence and adulthood. In the physical domain, preschoolers, counterintuitively, perform better than school-aged children, who in turn perform better than adolescents and adults. As they grow older learners are less flexible: they are less likely to adopt an initially unfamiliar hypothesis that is consistent with new evidence. Instead, learners prefer a familiar hypothesis that is less consistent with the evidence. In the social domain, both preschoolers and adolescents are actually the most flexible learners, adopting an unusual hypothesis more easily than either 6-y-olds or adults. There may be important developmental transitions in flexibility at the entry into middle childhood and in adolescence, which differ across domains.causal reasoning | social cognition | cognitive development | adolescence | life history O ne of the most distinctive biological features of human beings is our unusual life history. Compared with our closest primate relatives, we have a dramatically extended childhood, including an exceptionally long middle childhood and adolescence. Moreover, humans have shorter interbirth intervals than our closest primate relatives, producing an even greater number of less-capable children (1). There is evidence for other human adaptations that helped cope with this flood of needy young. In contrast to our closest primate relatives, human children enjoy the benefits of care from three sources in addition to biological mothers: pair-bonded fathers (2), alloparents (3), and postmenopausal women, in particular, grandmothers (4).It may seem evolutionarily paradoxical that humans would have developed a life history that includes such expensive and vulnerable young for such a long period. However, across many different species, including birds and both placental and marsupial mammals, there is a very general (although not perfect) correlation between relative brain size, intelligence and a reliance on learning, and an extended period of immaturity (5-7). This correlation suggests a relation between our distinctive human life history and our equally distinctive large brains and reliance on learning, particularly cultural learning. Such a relation between biology and culture ...

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“…During adolescence, youth experience transitions and stressors that often threaten their subjective well‐being (Gilman & Huebner, ; Steinberg et al, ). Specifically, youth experience less life‐satisfaction and more depressed mood during early to mid‐adolescence (Goldbeck, Schmitz, Besier, Herschbach, & Henrich, ; Natsuaki, Biehl, & Ge, ).…”

Section: Optimism and Adolescent Well‐beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental antecedents of adolescent optimism in rural midwestern U.S. Latinx youth

Taylor

Kittrell

Nair

et al. 2019

Journal Community Psychology

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Aims Decades of scientific research have found optimism to have wide‐ranging effects on individuals' health and well‐being. Researchers have largely examined optimism in adults, but have begun addressing the benefits of optimism in adolescents. Challenges and stressors in adolescence can threaten youths' subjective well‐being; therefore, identifying factors that contribute to the growth of optimism could have important health implications. However, researchers have more often examined the effect of optimism on youth outcomes rather than factors that might positively or negatively contribute to the development of optimism. Methods We assessed how salient developmental tasks (resilience, ethnic pride, and school attachment), family stress, and depressive problems individually contribute to Latinx youths' optimism at two time points (N = 123, 58.8% female, M age = 11.54 years). Results We found support for associations between both resilience and school attachment and optimism, but findings were weaker across time and with stressors included in the model. Depressive problems also appeared to weaken optimism across time. Conclusion Given the established links between optimism and health, it will be important for researchers to continue to identify factors that contribute to the development of youth optimism, and assess whether they could be used in interventions to foster optimism.

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Around the world, adolescence is a time of heightened sensation seeking and immature self‐regulation

Cited by 328 publications

References 46 publications

Development of Multifaceted Risk Taking and the Relations to Sex Steroid Hormones: A Longitudinal Study

Development of Multifaceted Risk Taking and the Relations to Sex Steroid Hormones: A Longitudinal Study

Changes in cognitive flexibility and hypothesis search across human life history from childhood to adolescence to adulthood

Developmental antecedents of adolescent optimism in rural midwestern U.S. Latinx youth

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