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What Were You Thinking? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The graphic at right illustrates the areas of the brain that were active in both adults (in blue) and teenagers (in pink) in response to a task that required participants to decide if a dangerous scenario was a “good idea” (relative to scenarios that were safe). All scenarios were presented as text. As can be seen, adults showed relatively more activity in the parts of the brain that create mental imagery, as well as the parts of the brain that often signal internal distress. Both of these areas are associated with a rapid and automatic response. Teenagers on the other hand, showed increased activity in a part of the brain commonly associated with reasoning and judgment. Utilizing this part of the brain results in a longer, more thoughtful decision process. While this approach might seem more mature, it actually is not, given that most decisions regarding potentially dangerous consequences should be automatic. More simply put, whether or not it is a good idea to, for example, jump off a roof should not require reasoning. These data suggest that adults, when confronted with a potentially dangerous scenario, are more likely to create a mental image of possible outcomes, and to have an aversive response to the image. For example, when asked if “jumping off a roof” is a good idea, the typical adult immediately generates visual imagery of potential injury and experiences a physical aversion to that image, evoking a rapid “bad idea” response. Teenagers, who took longer to respond to dangerous scenarios, seem to be trying to decide whether or not the scenarios were actually dangerous. Perhaps because they lack the mental image and subsequent visceral response, teenagers need to reason out the question, and therefore have a more difficult time generating the correct response. For more detailed information on this study, click here. |
