Adolescent sensitivity to rewards, risk-taking, and adaptive behaviour: development of the dual systems perspective

Purpose: According to current developmental neuroscience, adolescence is a period of heightened sensitivity to rewards that results in the increased tendency towards risk. This paper presents the current state of knowledge on the consequences of adolescent sensitivity to rewards and indicates directions for future research. The following sections describe how sensitivity to rewards can be directed towards risk-taking, safe or prosocial behaviour, and improved cognitive performance, depending on different task demands and various social contexts.

Views: Studies on adolescent behaviour conducted from the dual systems perspective indicate that heightened sensitivity to rewards can constitute vulnerability. The results gathered in this paper, however, demonstrate that in several situations adolescent sensitivity to rewards can be redirected from risk-taking towards safe or prosocial behaviour, or can result in the increased cognitive performance. Particularly interesting are the findings showing that individual differences in neural reward-related activity during risk and social dilemma tasks performed in a laboratory make it possible to predict risky behaviours (e.g. substance use, skipping school) and depressive symptoms, one year after the study.

Conclusions: Investigating consequences of reward sensitivity in various tasks and diverse social contexts can shed more light on the nature of adolescent behaviour and lead to the development of the dual systems perspective.