The distracted teenage brain

Most teenagers have a reputation of not making smart decisions, and having a different way of thinking. Some researchers blame those bad decisions on the immaturity of a teenager’s prefrontal cortex. It is the part of the brain that makes decisions and plans (a way of thinking).

 

 A phycologist named Zackary Roper and his team worked with two groups: 13-16 year olds and 20-35 years old. Each person had to play a game. During the game, a computer had six circles on the screen, they were all different colours. The players had to find a red or green circle. These targets had a horizontal or vertical line inside. The other targets had lines at different angles. When a player found the right circle they had to press two keys on a keyboard. The keys they pressed meant they found the circle with the vertical or the horizontal line. When one of the players hit the right key, the screen would flash of how they got it correct.

 

For some players, green circles provided a large (10-cent) reward and red circles rewarded a small (2-cent) reward. For all of the players, the amounts were reversed. With red circles worth more. All other colors had no reward.

 

When the scientist asked the players about the value of red vs. green colors, both teens and adults didn’t know that a circles colour had any effect of how much they earned during the game.

 

 After the game was done, the scientists told the players that they had a new target. Each player had to report the orientation of the line inside the blue diamond. Again, groups of six symbols were on the screen. Only one was a diamond. The other five were still circles. In other trials there were no red and green circles.

 

The researchers checked how long it took for the players to find the diamond and record their answers. When no red or green circles were among the onscreen options, both adults and teens responded quickly. But when a red or green circle showed up, both groups took a bit longer. Adults, though, quickly stopped paying attention to the colored circles.

 

Teens reacted differently. They took longer to respond whenever a red or green circle showed up. Their response times never sped up. Their attention still was drawn to the previously valued circles, even though the shapes no longer brought any reward. The red and green circles were distracting teens from their objective. The game demonstrates that the attention of adolescents is especially drawn to rewarding information. Texting or using social media, trigger the brain’s reward system. Once the teenage brain has linked a behavior to that reward, it continues to seek the reward again and again.

 

This shows that teenagers have a different way of thinking, how will you think it will affect teenagers in life by thinking that way?

What is another reason why teenagers think this way?

Why do adults have a different way of thinking?

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