How does social evaluation influence Hot and Cool inhibitory control in adolescence?

The aim of the present study is to examine whether in Hot, i.e., affectively charged contexts, or cool, i.e., affectively neutral contexts, inhibitory control capacity increases or decreases under social evaluation in adolescents and adults. In two experiments, adolescents and young adults completed two Stroop-like tasks under either a social evaluation condition or an alone condition. The social evaluation condition comprised the presence of a peer (Experiment 1) or an expert (Experiment 2) playing the role of an evaluator, while under the alone condition, the task was performed alone. In the Cool Stroop task, participants had to refrain from reading color names to identify the ink color in which the words were printed. In the Hot Stroop task, participants had to determine the emotional expression conveyed by faces from the NimStim database while ignoring the emotion word displayed beneath. The results were similar in both experiments. In adolescents, social evaluation by a peer (Experiment 1) or by an expert (Experience 2) facilitated Hot but not cool inhibitory control. In adults, social evaluation had no effect on Hot or cool inhibitory control. The present findings expand our understanding of the favorable influence of socioemotional context on Hot inhibitory control during adolescence in healthy individuals.

Peers' Choices Influence Adolescent Risk-taking Especially When Explicit Risk Information is Lacking.

This study examines the impact of peers' previous cautious versus risky choices on adolescents' risk-taking depending on the level of information about the risk. Adolescents completed an adaptation of the BART that manipulated social influence (cautious and risky) and risk information (i.e., informed, noninformed). Results showed that social influence impacts adolescents' decisions on the noninformed BART but not on the informed BART. In the noninformed BART, the peers' cautious choices strongly decreased risk-taking and led to greater performance. The peers' risky choices increase adolescents' risk-taking, but this effect is limited to situations involving minimal risk. Thus social experience may be a specific social context that represents a valuable source of information during adolescence, especially in situations with high uncertainty.

Adolescents' inhibitory control: keep it cool or lose control.

Inhibitory control (i.e., the ability to resist automatisms, temptations, distractions, or interference and to adapt to conflicting situations) is a determinant of cognitive and socio-emotional development. In light of the discrepancies of previous findings on the development of inhibitory control in affectively charged contexts, two important issues need to be addressed. We need to determine (a) whether cool inhibitory control (in affectively neutral contexts) and hot inhibitory control (in affectively charged contexts) follow the same developmental pattern and (b) the degree of specificity of these two types of inhibitory control at different ages. Thus, in the present study, we investigated the developmental patterns of cool and hot inhibitory control and the degree of specificity of these abilities in children, adolescents and adults. Typically developing children, adolescents, and adults performed two Stroop-like tasks: an affectively neutral one (Cool Stroop task) and an affectively charged one (Hot Stroop task). In the Cool Stroop task, the participants were asked to identify the ink color of the words independent of color that the words named; in the Hot Stroop task, the participants were asked to identify the emotional expression of a face independent of the emotion named by a simultaneously displayed written word. We found that cool inhibitory control abilities develop linearly with age, whereas hot inhibitory control abilities follow a quadratic developmental pattern, with adolescents displaying worse hot inhibitory control abilities than children and adults. In addition, cool and hot inhibitory control abilities were correlated in children but not in adolescents and adults. The present study suggests (a) that cool and hot inhibitory control abilities develop differently from childhood to adulthood - i.e., that cool inhibition follows a linear developmental pattern and hot inhibition follows an adolescent-specific pattern - and (b) that they become progressively more domain-specific with age.

Does ambiguity aversion influence the framing effect during decision making?

Decision-makers present a systematic tendency to avoid ambiguous options for which the level of risk is unknown. This ambiguity aversion is one of the most striking decision-making biases. Given that human choices strongly depend on the options' presentation, the purpose of the present study was to examine whether ambiguity aversion influences the framing effect during decision making. We designed a new financial decision-making task involving the manipulation of both frame and uncertainty levels. Thirty-seven participants had to choose between a sure option and a gamble depicting either clear or ambiguous probabilities. The results revealed a clear preference for the sure option in the ambiguity condition regardless of frame. However, participants presented a framing effect in both the risk and ambiguity conditions. Indeed, the framing effect was bidirectional in the risk condition and unidirectional in the ambiguity condition given that it did not involve preference reversal but only a more extreme choice tendency.

What have we learned about the processes involved in the Iowa Gambling Task from developmental studies?

Developmental studies using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) or child-friendly adaptations of the IGT converged in showing that children and adolescents exhibit a strong bias in favor of disadvantageous choices whereas adults learn to decide advantageously during the course of the task. In the present article, we reviewed developmental studies that used the IGT or child-friendly adaptations of the IGT to show how these findings provide a better understanding of the processes involved in decision-making under uncertainty. For instance, developmental studies have underlined that until late adolescence, the dominant strategy is to focus only on the frequency of punishment and to choose among options with infrequent losses. Indeed, school-aged children and adolescents' choices in the IGT seem to be guided by the loss frequency leading them to fail in distinguishing between advantageous and disadvantageous options. In addition, recent developmental studies revealed that adults switch less often after losses than school-aged children and adolescents. These findings suggest that psychological tolerance to loss may facilitate learning the characteristics of each option, which in turn improves the ability to choose advantageously. In conclusion, developmental studies help us refine our understanding of decision-making.