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Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria (Sao... 2021Understanding the distal (≤ 6 years of age) and proximal (between 6 years of age and early adolescence) factors in adolescent risk behavior is important for preventing...
OBJECTIVE
Understanding the distal (≤ 6 years of age) and proximal (between 6 years of age and early adolescence) factors in adolescent risk behavior is important for preventing and reducing morbidity and mortality in this population. This study sought to investigate the factors associated with the following adolescent risk behaviors: i) aggressiveness and violence, ii) tobacco, alcohol, and illicit substance use, iii) depressive behavior and self-harm (including suicidal ideation and attempts), iv) sexual risk behavior, and v) multiple risk behavior.
METHODS
A systematic review was conducted to identify longitudinal studies that examined factors associated with adolescent risk behaviors. The PubMed, PsycINFO, and LILACS databases were searched.
RESULTS
Of the 249 included studies, 23% reported distal risk factors, while the remaining reported proximal risk factors. Risk factors were related to sociodemographic characteristics (neighborhood, school, and peers), family patterns, and the presence of other adolescent risk behaviors.
CONCLUSION
Distal and proximal factors in adolescent risk behavior that are not exclusively socioeconomic, familial, environmental, or social should be explored more thoroughly.
Topics: Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior; Child; Humans; Risk Factors; Risk-Taking; Sexual Behavior; Substance-Related Disorders; Suicidal Ideation
PubMed: 32756805
DOI: 10.1590/1516-4446-2019-0835 -
Current Opinion in Psychology Dec 2022Adolescent decision-making has been characterized as risky, and a heightened reward sensitivity may be one of the aspects contributing to riskier choice-behavior.... (Review)
Review
Adolescent decision-making has been characterized as risky, and a heightened reward sensitivity may be one of the aspects contributing to riskier choice-behavior. Previous studies have targeted reward-sensitivity in adolescence and the neurobiological mechanisms of reward processing in the adolescent brain. In recent examples, researchers aim to disentangle the contributions of risk- and reward-sensitivity to adolescent risk-taking. Here, we discuss recent findings of adolescent's risk preferences and the associated neural mechanisms. We highlight potential frameworks that target individual differences in risk preferences in an effort to understand adolescent risk-taking, and with an ultimate goal of leveraging undesirable levels of risk taking.
Topics: Adolescent; Humans; Decision Making; Reward; Risk-Taking; Brain Mapping; Brain
PubMed: 36088823
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101457 -
Current Opinion in Psychology Feb 2024Research on self-reported risk perception and risk taking suggests age-related decrements in risk preference, with older adults less likely to engage in general and... (Review)
Review
Research on self-reported risk perception and risk taking suggests age-related decrements in risk preference, with older adults less likely to engage in general and domain-specific risk taking (i.e., in financial, health-related, ethical, career, and leisure contexts). Data relating to social risks, however, are inconsistent. With respect to behavioral risk-taking tasks, age-related differences vary depending on task characteristics and older adults' cognitive capacities. Specifically, older adults are less good at learning to take advantageous risks and take fewer risks when faced with gains, especially financial and mortality-based ones. We contextualize these trends by referencing relevant theoretical frameworks (see Frey et al., 2021 [1]) and by drawing on the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate recent examples of age-related differences in real-life risk responses.
Topics: Humans; Aged; Risk-Taking; Pandemics; Learning; Self Report; Perception
PubMed: 38043148
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101746 -
Journal of Research on Adolescence :... Mar 2021This study examined whether cognitive control mediated the association between socioeconomic status (SES; composite of income-to-needs ratio and parent education) and...
This study examined whether cognitive control mediated the association between socioeconomic status (SES; composite of income-to-needs ratio and parent education) and changes in risk-taking behaviors. The sample included 167 dyads of adolescents (53% male; M = 14.07 years at Time 1) and their parents, assessed annually across 4 years. Parents reported socioeconomic variables at Time 1. Adolescents reported risk-taking behaviors at Times 1 and 4, and completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging cognitive control task at Times 2 and 3. Lower SES was associated with lower behavioral (but not neural) cognitive control, which was associated with increases in risk-taking behaviors. The findings suggest that elevated socioeconomic risk may compromise cognitive control which can cascade into maladaptive behaviors in adolescence.
Topics: Adolescent; Cognition; Female; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Parents; Risk-Taking; Social Class
PubMed: 32951287
DOI: 10.1111/jora.12583 -
NeuroImage Jul 2022Human risk tolerance is highly idiosyncratic and individuals often show distinctive preferences when faced with similar risky situations. However, the neural...
Human risk tolerance is highly idiosyncratic and individuals often show distinctive preferences when faced with similar risky situations. However, the neural underpinnings of individual differences in risk-taking remain unclear. Here we combined structural and perfusion MRI and examined the associations between brain anatomy and individual risk-taking behavior/risk tolerance in a sample of 115 healthy participants during the Balloon Analogue Risk Task, a well-established sequential risky decision paradigm. Both whole brain and region-of-interest analyses showed that the left cerebellum gray matter volume (GMV) has a strong association with individual risk-taking behavior and risk tolerance, outperforming the previously reported associations with the amygdala and right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) GMV. Left cerebellum GMV also accounted for risk tolerance and risk-taking behavior changes with aging. However, regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) provided no additional predictive power. These findings suggest a novel cerebellar anatomical contribution to individual differences in risk tolerance. Further studies are necessary to elucidate the underestimated important role of cerebellum in risk-taking.
Topics: Brain; Cerebellum; Gray Matter; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Risk-Taking
PubMed: 35346839
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119148 -
Zeitschrift Fur Kinder- Und... May 2021
Topics: Humans; Risk Factors; Risk-Taking
PubMed: 35514174
DOI: 10.1024/1422-4917/a000847 -
The Journal of Arthroplasty Apr 2022Decisions regarding care for osteoarthritis involve physicians helping patients understand likely benefits and harms of treatment. Little work has directly compared...
BACKGROUND
Decisions regarding care for osteoarthritis involve physicians helping patients understand likely benefits and harms of treatment. Little work has directly compared patient and surgeon risk-taking attitudes, which may help inform strategies for shared decision-making and improve patient satisfaction.
METHODS
We surveyed patients contemplating total joint arthroplasty visiting a high-volume specialty hospital regarding general questions about risk-taking, as well as willingness to undergo surgery under hypothetical likelihoods of moderate improvement and complications. We compared responses from surgeons answering similar questions about willingness to recommend surgery.
RESULTS
Altogether 82% (162/197) of patients responded, as did 65% (30/46) of joint replacement surgeons. Mean age among patients was 66.4 years; 58% were female. Surgeons averaged 399 surgeries in 2019. Responses were similar between groups for general, health, career, financial, and sports/leisure risk-taking (P > .20); surgeons were marginally more risk-taking in driving (P = .05). For willingness to have or recommend surgery, as the chance of benefit decreased, or the chance of harm increased, the percentage willing to have or recommend surgery decreased. Between a 70% and 95% chance of moderate improvement (for a 2% complication risk), as well as between a 90% and 95% chance of moderate improvement (for 4% and 6% complication risks), the percentage willing to have or recommend surgery was indistinguishable between patients and surgeons. However, for lower likelihoods of improvement, a higher percentage of patients were willing to undergo surgery than surgeons recommended. Patients were also more often indifferent between complication risks.
CONCLUSION
Although patients and surgeons were often willing to have or recommend joint replacement surgery at similar rates, they diverged for lower-benefit higher-harm scenarios.
Topics: Aged; Arthroplasty, Replacement, Hip; Arthroplasty, Replacement, Knee; Female; Humans; Male; Risk-Taking; Surgeons; Surveys and Questionnaires
PubMed: 34952164
DOI: 10.1016/j.arth.2021.12.021 -
Clinical Psychology Review Feb 2022The investigation of risky decision-making has a prominent place in clinical science, with sundry behavioral tasks aimed at empirically quantifying the psychological... (Review)
Review
The investigation of risky decision-making has a prominent place in clinical science, with sundry behavioral tasks aimed at empirically quantifying the psychological construct of risk-taking. However, use of differing behavioral tasks has resulted in lack of agreement on risky decision-making within psychosis-spectrum disorders, as findings fail to converge upon the typical, binary conceptualization of increased risk-seeking or risk-aversion. The current review synthesizes the behavioral, risky decision-making literature to elucidate how specific task parameters may contribute to differences in task performance, and their associations with psychosis symptomatology and cognitive functioning. A paring of the literature suggests that: 1) Explicit risk-taking may be characterized by risk imperception, evidenced by less discrimination between choices of varying degrees of risk, potentially secondary to cognitive deficits. 2) Ambiguous risk-taking findings are inconclusive with few published studies. 3) Uncertain risk-taking findings, consistently interpreted as more risk-averse, have not parsed risk attitudes from confounding processes that may impact decision-making (e.g. risk imperception, reward processing, motivation). Thus, overgeneralized interpretations of task-specific risk-seeking/aversion should be curtailed, as they may fail to appropriately characterize decision-making phenomena. Future research in psychosis-spectrum disorders would benefit from empirically isolating contributions of specific processes during risky decision-making, including the newly hypothesized risk imperception.
Topics: Cognition; Decision Making; Humans; Psychotic Disorders; Reward; Risk-Taking
PubMed: 34990988
DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2021.102112 -
Biological Psychiatry Apr 2021Avoidant behavior is a defining feature of pediatric anxiety disorders. Although prior research has examined it from the perspective of early information processing... (Review)
Review
Avoidant behavior is a defining feature of pediatric anxiety disorders. Although prior research has examined it from the perspective of early information processing events, there has been relatively less consideration of the processes by which anxious youth make avoidant decisions and how these choices are reinforced over time. Studies of risk taking are valuable in this regard because they consider how individuals identify the pros and cons of their choices, how they weigh potential gains and losses and estimate their respective probabilities, and how they tolerate the uncertainty intrinsic to any decision. In this review, we place risk taking within existing models of information processing in pediatric anxiety disorders and highlight the particular value of this construct for informing models of developmental psychopathology and individual differences in outcome over time. We review existing behavioral and neurobiological studies of risk taking in anxious youth and conclude by identifying directions for future research.
Topics: Adolescent; Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders; Avoidance Learning; Brain; Child; Decision Making; Humans; Risk-Taking
PubMed: 33451676
DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2020.11.003 -
Social Science & Medicine (1982) Dec 2021Although there is some evidence that religious faith may offer protection against sexual risk taking in adolescence and emerging adulthood, no attempts have been made to... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis Review
RATIONALE
Although there is some evidence that religious faith may offer protection against sexual risk taking in adolescence and emerging adulthood, no attempts have been made to systematically quantify the association.
OBJECTIVE
Using data from studies conducted in the 2000-2020 period, this meta-analysis aimed to estimate the link between religious faith and four sexual risk-taking behaviors in samples of adolescents and emerging adults.
METHODS
Five different search systems were used to conduct a systematic literature search in April 2020. Studies that contained quantitative data on religious faith and at least one indicator of sexual risk taking (age at sexual debut, number of sexual partners, condom use at most recent sexual intercourse, and consistent condom use) were searched for. In total, 35 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, in English, were identified. Random-effects meta-analytic approach was used to assess target associations among 41,758 adolescents and emerging adults (M = 18.9 years, 37% male). To estimate the effect across the four risk indicators, we employed robust variance estimation (RVE) method.
RESULTS
We found small associations between religious faith on the one hand and age at sexual debut (r = 0.08, 95% CI = 0.03, 0.12) and the number of sexual partners on the other hand (r = -0.15, 95% CI = -0.21, -0.09). No association with condom use was observed. With all studies included, the overall effect size was 0.11 (95% CI = 0.06, 0.16), indicating a small (protective) role of religious faith in young people's sexual risk taking.
CONCLUSIONS
Considering the limited role of religious faith in young people's sexual and reproductive health, comprehensive sexuality education remains essential for risk-reduction, even among more religious young people.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Female; Humans; Male; Risk-Taking; Safe Sex; Sex Education; Sexual Behavior; Sexual Partners
PubMed: 34662764
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114488