14 DAY TRIAL // Though most parents would rather this not be the case, there is no single, clear-cut explanation for why teenagers engage in risky behaviors. According to researchers, a vast number of influences intertwine to promote teen drinking, smoking and drug use, among other habits that are illegal. A new investigation shows that approaching this issue in a general manner, using a single approach for all teens, may be unsuccessful, and may actually do more harm than good.
In other words, it may be a lot more efficient to take a customized, tailored approach to addressing each individual teen and adolescent. The research was presented today in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS), PhysOrg reports.
This particular study focused on the correlations between behavior and the executive cognitive functions, which are in charge of controlling impulsivity. Researchers already knew that the area of the cortex in charge of these functions – and especially working memory – did not fully maturate until after the age of 30, so they set out to look at the connections between the two in more detail.
The work was conducted by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia expert Hallam Hurt, MD, and Annenberg Public Policy Center scientist Daniel Romer, PhD. The team looked at 387 adolescents, and sought to track how their risk-taking behaviors developed in relation to the particular class of cognitive functions they were interested in. The participants were all of various races, ethnic groups and socioeconomic statuses, the group reports, and were between the ages of ten and 12 when the study began. The target behaviors were sensation seeking and acting without thinking (markers of impulsivity) and fighting, gambling and alcohol use (actual risky behaviors).
“Our findings clearly suggest that explanations for why adolescents take risks are not simple. Many adolescents have the capacity to control their risk-taking, and we will need to find ways for them to channel sensation-seeking drives toward safer activities,” Romer explains. The researchers found that not all teens who engaged in risky behaviors at a young age on account of impulsivity had a weakly developed working memory. This in turn would seem to indicate that other mechanisms are at play in the brain as well, dictating their general behavior patterns.