Recent studies provide elegant demonstrations of how adolescent behavior is differentially biased in motivational contexts. Using a gambling task in which reward feedback was provided during decision-making (“hot” trials which heightened task-elicited arousal) or held until after the decision (“cold” trials), Figner and colleagues[16] showed that adolescents made disproportionately more risky gambles compared to adults but only in the emotionally-charged “hot” condition. Steinberg and colleagues, using a similar gambling task[17] and a delay discounting task[18], have shown that sensitivity to rewards and incentives actually peaks during adolescence, with a steady increase from late childhood to adolescence and subsequent decline from late adolescence to adulthood. These findings illustrate a ∩-shaped function, peaking between 14 and 16, and then declining. Taken together, these studies suggest that during adolescence, motivational cues of potential reward are particularly salient and can lead to riskier or suboptimal choices that diminish effective goal-oriented behavior.
