Adolescent cognitive development - Universiteit Utrecht

Lecture 3  

Part 1 – adolescent cognitive development 

• Conditional reasoning/propositional logic: Classic Modus Ponens (MP) inference: if p then q 

What is cognition? 

• Cognition: aspects of mind related to the acquisition, modification, and manipulation of knowledge in particular contexts 

• Cognitive development: changes in how an individual thinks, solves problems, and changes in memory, attention and information processing 

• Two perspectives in text: Piagetian and Information Processing 

• Piagetian perspective: focuses on what are the changes that we see all people go to 

• Information processing perspective: how do we process information? How does this change across time? Based on individual differences.  

Textbook: adolescent thinking compared to children differ in (at least) 5 ways 

1. Better at thinking about what is possible 

1. Children: focus on here and now 

2. Better at thinking about what is abstract 

3. More often think about the process of thinking – able to think about how they think about things (metacognition) 

4. Thinking is multidimensional (what persons say, how they say it and what they mean) 

5. Able to see things as relative rather than absolute (not black - white) 

Cognitive development during adolescence: a Piagetian perspective 

• Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss cognitive psychologist 

• Stage Theory of Cognitive Development (individuals in different stages think differently) 

• How thinking changes in varies stages of adolescence. Piaget believed that children were active instructors of their knowledge (not only teachers/parents).  

Cognitive development during adolescence: a Piagetian perspective 

• Formal operations – final stage of cognitive development 

• Concrete: discuss world as it is 

• Formal: as it might be/become 

• Increase in ability for abstraction/abstract thought, speculation about the future 

• --> Allows an individual to place their lives in a personal and societal perspective 

• Needed to: achieve identity, form goals, select an occupation 

Adolescent cognitive abilities 

• Understand impact of: past on present, present on future 

• How one thing relates to another 

• Greater capacity to evaluate immediate and long-range costs and benefits 

• World as might be, ought to be 

Formal operations: 4 overlapping logical abilities 

1. Inductive reasoning 

1. Reasoning from specific experiences or observations to a general rule 

2. Examples – rule – induction (ERI) 

4. I enjoy watching Grey's Anatomy, ER, and House... so I must really like medical dramas. 

2. Hypothetical – deductive reasoning 

1. Reason from general rule to specific or new situations 

2. Rule – example – deduction (RED) 

4. i enjoy medical dramas... so if I tried watching Scrubs, I might like that too. 

3. Reflective – recursive thinking 

1. Think about one's own thoughts as if someone else is thinking about them 

2. Meta-cognition: able to think about what we think of something 

4. Inter-propositional Logic 

1. Ability to judge the truth of logical relationships among propositions 

2. It's about the structure, not the content 

1. P1: all elephants are animals 

2. P2: all animals are green 

3. Conclusion: all elephants are green 

Reasoning and science 

Limitations of Piaget's Theory 

• Age results vary as a function of the complexity/abstractness of the task and response mode, standards 

• Piaget interested in competence not performance 

• Piaget was most interested in learning about what is the maximum capacity that humans are capable of. Formal operations represent that top level of mental capacity. Piaget didn't care if all humans achieved that. 

• If-then begins at 5 for some fantasy like questions (simplify the test down) 

• By 10 can show some competence in judging conclusions on familiar topics. After that a monotonic increase but only 50% of adults can get the most difficult questions right 

• Even in adulthood, people continue to make a number of reasoning errors 

• “Bounded rationality”: the fact that decisionmakers have three constraints: 

• (1) only limited, often unreliable, information is available regarding possible alternatives and their consequences, (2) human mind has only limited capacity to evaluate and process the information that is available, and (3) only a limited amount of time is available to make a decision. Therefore even individuals who intend to make rational choices are bound to make satisficing (rather than maximizing or optimizing) choices in complex situations. These limits (bounds) on rationality also make it nearly impossible to draw up contracts that cover every contingency, necessitating reliance on rules of thumb. 

• Cultural insensitivity 

• While formal operations may be a universal potential, the form that it takes in each culture may be different from the formal tasks devised by Piaget 

• Different contexts may require different cognitive requirements 

• Is there a form of thinking in Holland that differs from countries? 

• For example: 

• Sarcasm, metaphors, humor 

Information processing perspective improves in 5 areas: 

1. Attention 

1. Improvements in both selective attention and divided attention 

2. Memory 

1. Working memory: info is held for a short time while a problem is being solved 

2. Long-term memory: recall something from a long time ago 

3. Autographic memory: recall of personally meaningful past events 

4. Reminiscence bump: when we get older and we think back, we remember the adolescence period the best 

3. Speed 

1. Adolescents are faster than children at processing information 

2. Increase from 10-late teen years 

4. Organization 

1. Improvements in organizational strategies 

2. Planful 

3. Flexible in strategies 

5. Metacognition  

Conclusion 

• Thus, in general there are profound changes in cognitive abilities during adolescence 

• This raises the question of why adolescents are such poor decision makers... 

Part 2 – theories of adolescent risk taking 

Definition of risk taking 

• Risk taking 1: engaging in behaviors that could potentially lead to negative outcomes (real-world risk taking) 

• Risk taking 2: choosing an option with the higher outcome variability – that is, the wider range of possible outcomes  

• Thus, riskier options involve greater uncertainty about the resulting outcome (risky decision making in the lab) 

Very old: Elkind's (1967) Imaginary audience and personal fable – links to risk taking 

• Imaginary audience - adolescent's assumption that his or her preoccupation with personal appearance and behavior is shared by everyone else 

• Heightened self-consciousness characteristics of early adolescence 

• Personal fable – follows the imaginary audience 

• Thinking of himself/herself as the center of attention, the adolescent comes to believe that it is because he or she is special and unique 

• Gives rise to a sense of 

• Invulnerability 

• Specialty 

• In turn leading to a propensity for behavioral risk-taking  

• The theory of adolescent egocentrism predicts a curvilinear increase and decrease in adolescent egocentrism between childhood and middle-to-late adolescence 

Problems with Elkind's Theory 

• Current research: 

• Adolescents do not believe they are invulnerable 

• Overestimate key risks/negative consequences (lung cancer from smoking, HIV risk, death) 

• Nevertheless, they engage in risk taking because perceived benefits outweigh risks 

New theories 

Rational decision-making model (cold cognition) 

• Cognitive perspective: risk taking = decision making 

1. Identifying options 

2. Assessing the possible consequences of each option (appraisal peaks at 11-13) 

3. Evaluating the desirability of each option 

4. Estimating the probability for each consequence 

5. Applying an algorithm to the above, to identify the greatest subjective utility 

• Costs and benefits of alternatives and probability (b and d) 

• Now recognize social benefits 

• Middle to late adolescents’ decision-making equivalent to adults 

• In hypothetical, low arousal situations (cold cognitive tasks), alone 

• Cognitive capacity shapes the process of decision-making 

• Risk perception equivalent (expect for occasional risky behavior) 

• Critiques on rational cognitive model 

• Does risk perception link to risk behavior? 

• Not always (depends on conditionality) 

• How likely are you to experience negative consequences from smoking? 

• Risk takers > non risk takers (all non-smokers) 

• If you smoked, how likely are consequences? 

• Risk takers < non risk takers (if risk takers smoked) 

• Optimistic bias 

• Reflects need to assess risk perception before engagement in particular behavior. 

• Experience could alter risk perception 

• Adolescents have the ability to be rationale, but: 

• More present oriented 

• More susceptible to peer pressure 

• Less able to regulate emotional states 

• Cold decision making: logical reasoning, information processing 

• Hot decision making: psychosocial maturity (self regulation), resistance to peer pressure, emotional load 

• They do not think they are immortal. Overestimate probabilities and overestimate the benefits 

Dual process cognitive models 

1. Prototype willingness model 

1. Two ways: prototype vs attitudes & norms: Reasoned pathway (deliberate weighing of costs/benefits) and a social reaction pathway (experiential processing guided by social stereotypes of risk takers) and includes behavioral willingness to engage in risk 

2. Willingness better predictor of risk behavior than intensions during early and middle adolescence, and then it reverses 

3. Focus is on type of processing heuristic vs analytic 

1. Intuition vs reason 

2. Affect vs cognition 

3. Image-based vs rule-based 

4. Social influence vs cognitive influence 

5. Reactive vs reasoned 

1. Prototype: what is our view of people who smoke pot? > cool group? > influences our willingness to engage in that behavior 

2. Fuzzy trace theory 

1. Emphasis on “gist-based” intuitions, derived from experiences 

2. Cognitive maturation entails reasoning and intuition. Using intuitions is more efficient – faster develop through experience 

3. Adolescents take more risks because they are more depending on verbatim reasoning to make a decision than they are in gist-based reasoning.  

4. Verbatim vs gist-based reasoning 

6. Factors in risk taking include mental processes (gist and verbatim) and individual differences (in inhibition and reward sensitivity). Gist processes include the formation of mental representations and the retrieval of stored social values.  Verbatim processes underlie the calculation of expected values as reward magnitude multiplied by the probability of obtaining the reward.  In the verbatim calculation of expected value, reward sensitivity magnifies the subjective reward magnitude (hence the arrow), and an individual can be more or less sensitive to different classes of reward (some people have a sweet tooth but are indifferent to alcohol).  There are generally two classes of inhibition: cognitive which pertains to thought processes and can be unconscious, and response/behavioral, which pertains to the willful suppression of actions. 

1. Gist: essence of the information. When you have the gist of something, you understand it much more quickly than when you have to go through verbatim, costs and benefits et cetera. 

2. Gist of adults: don’t take risks. Adolescents don't have those experiences yet, so they don't have gist. 

7. Shift to gist... 

1. Gist-decision making (fuzzy intentions) reduces risk taking and increases with age and experience 

2. Young people shift from pros and cons to a more categorical gist 

Neurodevelopmental imbalance models (hot cognition) - emotion, context and self regulation 

• Emotions greatly affect decision making 

• Affects benefits (e.g., lessen social anxiety) 

• Being including in peer group 

• Anticipatory emotions 

• The thrill of passing parental or legal boundaries 

• Anticipating throwing up after drinking too much 

• Incidental emotion or background mood, context effects 

• Everyone is excited about the decision to jump into someone's swimming pool/swim in canal on a hot evening 

• Jumping off the Munt bridge 

• Cognitive control system vs socio-emotional reward system 

• In emotionally arousing hot contexts (e.g., when peers are present), adolescents’ rewards processing systems in the brain become hyper-responsive and override the cognitive control system ultimately leading to heightened adolescent risk taking 

• Age differences in resistance to peer influence: during mid- and late adolescent period adolescents develop the ability to resist peer influence. 

Albert, Chein, & Steinberg (2013) 

• Approach sensitization hypothesis 

• Among adolescents more than adults in the presence of peers “primes” a reward-sensitive motivational state that increases the subjective value of immediately available rewards and thereby increases preferences for the short-term benefits of risky choices over the long-term value of safe alternatives 

Fundamental assumptions of the model 

1. Emotions affect decision-making 

2. Adolescents exhibit stronger “bottom-up” affective reactivity in response to socially relevant stimuli and peers are highly salient (puberty leads to increase oxytocin receptors) 

3. Adolescents less capable of top-down cognitive control 

Mechanisms for peer presence effects on decision making: 

1. Modulating responses to incentive cues, as predicted by the approach-sensitization hypothesis 

1. Reward processing comes in line much more 

2. Disrupting inhibitory control, or 

3. Alerting both of these processes 

Stoplight game 

• Alone or with other sex peers 

• Run yellow light or go further. Crash? > delay. Goal: reach the endpoint as fast as possible. 

• Research: adolescents more so than adults take much more risk and have more crashes when they're with peers than when they are in the alone condition.  

• Adolescents' neural activity during the decision-making epoch showed greater activation of brain structures implicated in reward valuation (ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex) in the peer-condition scans relative to the alone-condition scans.  

• Participants with higher activation reported lower resistance to peer influence 

Brain 

• Prefrontal cortex: subsection of the frontal lobe responsible for advanced functions such as insight, judgment, reasoning and other executive functions 

• Amygdale: an area involved in emotional processing 

• Adolescents process information here rather than in prefrontal cortex > can create a tendency to react more impulsively 

• Limbic system: hypothalamus (HPA & HPG: need more stimulation, stress, risk) 

• Reward sensitivity – limbic 

• Self-regulation – prefrontal cortex 

Part 3 – adolescent risky decision making and the legal system 

Steinberg & Scott (2003) - youths should be treated in a separate justice system 

• Penal proportionality 

• Fair criminal punishment is dependent on: 

• Amount of harm caused or threatened by actor 

• Blameworthiness of actor 

• Excuse vs mitigation 

• Excuse – the defendant bears no responsibility – no punishment 

• Mitigation – blameworthiness of actor above thresholds of responsibility but below full responsibility – punishment by degree 

• e.g., the actor who kills intentionally is deemed less culpable where he or she does so without premeditation 

• One who kills under duress is guilty of manslaughter, not murder 

Factors that reduce culpability 

• Endogenous impairments in decision-making 

• Mental illness 

• Mental retardation 

• Extreme emotional distress 

• Susceptibility to influence or domination 

• Extraordinary circumstances 

• Duress 

• Provocation 

• Threatened injury 

• Out of character 

• First offense 

• Remorse 

• Positive history 

• Adolescents: 

• Diminished decision-making capacities 

• Heightened vulnerability to coercive circumstances 

• Unformed character 

• Adolescents are still in search for their identity 

Thus 

• Adolescents dealt with in a different system from adults 

• Rehabilitation is aim 

• None are eligible for death penalty