Child Psychology 2- Pre-Adult Brain

Risk Fcators of Early Brain Development- Living in poverty, victim abuse, parental substance abuse, maternal depression and single parent. The best environment is a stable, loving, nuturing relationship with a smaller group of adults. They should be able to explore and fingure things out for themeselves as this is the most important during the first 5 years of there life. From 18 months old you can see the differences in development as chicldren from educated families have a better vocabulary.

Early Brain Development- When a child is born th limbic system and cerebal cortex are still fairly immature; in the first few years of your life their are many synaptic connections that are made. It starts eariliet in the visual cortex and then the frontal and temporal lobes these are the brain area responsible for higher cognitive and emotional functioning.

Adolescent Brain Development- The adolescent brain changes as synaptic production occurs during adolescence, grey matter reaches peak volume and begins to decrease in density across several cortical regions.  Connections that are used enough are eliminated the environment is important in determining which connections are needed and which can be pruned.

Impact of Brain Development on risk taking behaviour- The limbic system is involved in the processing of social and emotional information develops earlier than the pre-frontal cortex making risky decisions more common.

*This process is combined with major environmental changes could possibly make them make responsible adult choices however there brains are still functioning quite differently.Examples of these changes would be moving schools or an increased responsibilty such as a part time job or caring for younger siblings.

Limbic System affects risk taking behaviour as its involved in the process of social and emotional information as making the risky decisions could be more common and more liekly to occur under higher levels of social influence. The pre-frontal cortex is not fully mature for adolescents to understnad the risk invovled in some tasks which means that they take these risks . Adults understand consequences as their brain had fully developed so they have the understanding.

Neurochemicals-  Reductions in the cerebral spine fluid can lead to impulsivity in rhesus macque monkeys this reduction is often seen in situations where the offspring had been subjected to stress as a baby.

* In human life this could happent children who are abused or neglected and so suffer a stressful life and have lower levels of serotonin, show more impulsivity. Therefore risk taking behaviour may not be entirely down to underdevelopment and it may be down to the environment

An example of this would be the genie case were she had been locked away throughout all of her childhood which meant that environement was negative as well as the possible lower serotonin levels.

Barkley-Levenson- 

Aim- To see if the activity in the brain is heightend in adolscence when part taking in risk taking behaviour compared to adults. This is done by using a fMRI scanner.

Sample-  19 healthy, right handed adults(ages 25-30) and 22 healthy,right handed adolscence(ages 13-17).

Research Method- This was a Quasi experiment using an independent measure design, the IV was naturally occuring as the age of the participant and the DV was the performance when gambling during an fMRI scanner.

Procedure-  Firstly there was pre testing and they were aksed to provide the primary income and spending per month. The participants were then given $20 and were informed they would use it as playing money in the fMRI task. They were then told they had the chance to win an extra $20 they could also lose there money aswell.(House money effect) All participant were assigned a payment of between $5 and $10 corrosponding to the trial that they accepted. 

Approximately one week after the intake seesion participants returned to the laboratory for the fMRI scanner session. While in the fMRI scanner they completed the gambling task and they were presented with a series of gambling tasks with a 50% probablity of winning or losing this type of gmabling task was a 'spinner'. The participants were extensively trained before going into the fMRI sanner to ensure that they knew what they had to do before they had the chance to win the real life money.

Key Findings- Increasing the expected value had a stronger influence over gambling choices in adolscences relative to adults. This effect was parrelled by greater activation in the ventral striatum in adolscents than adults.

Conclusions- Maturational changes in neural representation of valuation during adolscence are most robust in the ventrial straitum. Neural diffferences in sensitivity to EV chahnge across development.

Preventing Risk Taking Behaviour-  1. Educate younger people about risk taking behavour so they know that what they are doing is wrong, this could be included in the national cirriculum for example in the PSHE course.

With things such as drug taking everyone should be educated this could be done through reinforcement as by talking to them and showing them images of what could happen. This could also be done with bringing in new laws or changing laws which prevents people from doing this risk tsking behaviour is there is a harsher punishment at the end of it.

In older adolscences that can drive you can show them the risks of driving dangerously by adding the shock factor so that they want to drive sensibly also you could place restrictions in place for example curfews not allowing them to dirve after a certain time also you could give the driver inscentives for driving well to ensure that they carry on doing so examples of this could be giving them money back or giving them a larger discount the year after when they go to re-insure there car.

1. Griffiths-  His study aimed to see if there was a skil difference between gamblers and non-gamblers or if they were better charcterised by cogntive disorders.  Each participant was given £3 and then it was rated how long they played for there winnings at the end of it they aimed to stay on the machine(fruitskill) for 60 gambles. Results found that regular gamablers had a higher play rate and they stayed on the machine for longer. Regular gamblers are slightly more skillfull and they also beleive that they are more skillfull than they actually are. The main conclusion from the study is it may be helpful to problem gamblers so they can change their cognitive biases.