The role of impulsive choice in vulnerability to addictive disorders is particularly important during adolescence. First, adolescence is a period of increased risk for onset of substance use and the development of dependence. Second, adolescence is characterized by continuing development of the brain, particularly its prefrontal cortical areas, as evidenced by morphological (Yakovlev and Lecours 1967), electrophysiological (Hudspeth and Pribram 1992; Anokhin et al. 1996; Segalowitz and Davies 2004), and imaging (Ernst and Mueller 2008; Giedd 2008) data. Importantly, due to uneven neurodevelopmental trajectrories of different brain regions and systems, adolescence is characterized by a relative immaturity of the frontally mediated cognitive control system and relative maturity of the mostly sub-cortical systems underlying motivation and reward processing (Chambers et al. 2003). Consistent with this notion, adolescents show greater delay aversion compared to young adults (Scheres et al. 2006; Olson et al. 2007). Thus, in line with the competing neural systems model (Bickel et al. 2007), adolescents can be more susceptible to addictions because their “impulsive” system prevails over the “reflective” executive control system. Indeed, studies using various DD paradigms showed
