Working Memory Training in Adolescents Decreases Laboratory Risk Taking in the Presence of Peers

Abstract

Adolescence is a period of heightened risk-taking relative to both adulthood and childhood, due in part to peers' increased influence on adolescent decision making. Because adolescents' choices have harmful consequences, there is great interest in specific interventions that might attenuate risk taking. We hypothesized that it might be possible to reduce adolescent risk taking through an intervention targeting the ability/tendency to engage cognitive control processes. While some studies of Working Memory Training (WMT) have indicated subsequent enhancement of adults' cognitive control abilities, potential impacts on adolescent cognitive control have not been explored. Accordingly, we tested whether four weeks of WMT (relative to Active Control Training, ACT) might increase performance on cognitive control measures and decrease risk-taking in adolescents. Adolescents receiving WMT, compared to those receiving ACT, exhibited some evidence of improved short-term memory performance following the 4-week training period. Improvements did not significantly transfer to performance on basic cognitive control measures. However, on two risk-taking tasks administered at post-training either with or without an anonymous peer audience, adolescents who received WMT evinced suppressed levels of risk taking when observed by peers, an effect not seen in ACT. Further work is needed to more fully characterize the potential of WMT interventions in stemming risk behavior within adolescent samples.

Risk preferences of children and adolescents in relation to gender, cognitive skills, soft skills, and executive functions

“…Additional related work includes Rosenbaum et al (2017), who found some evidence that training adolescents in working memory decreased their risk taking behavior in a hypothetical gambling task. A potential explanation for the link between working memory and risk taking is that improved working memory accelerates executive function development and therefore reduces risk taking.…”

The Role of User Behaviour in Improving Cyber Security Management

“…Furthermore, here, we show that some psychological methods can increase pro-security behaviours, such as rewarding and penalizing security-related behaviours, using novel polymorphic security warnings, and using psychological methods to increase thinking about future consequences of actions. In addition, there are cognitive training methods, including working memory training, that help reduce impulsivity, risk taking and procrastination in the general population (Rosenbaum et al, 2017;Peckham and Johnson, 2018). Such cognitive training methods can be used to ameliorate these behavioural traits and help improve cybersecurity behaviours.…”

Do Older and Young Adults Learn to Integrate Geometry While Navigating in an Environment of a Serious Game?

“…[9][10][11][12] These games have been used not only for education, [13][14][15] but also for enhancing human skills such as working memory, executive function, and cognition. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] While there are numerous numbers of studies reporting on improvement of working memory and executive functions after an intervention [16][17][18][19][20][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] (see reviews 35,36 ), the effect of training with a serious game on spatial cognition has received relatively less attention. Nevertheless, studies suggest that spatial cognition is commonly enhanced by repeated exercises of some serious games.…”