Previous studies have shown that children and adolescents often tend toward risky decisions despite explicit knowledge about the potential negative consequences. This phenomenon has been suggested to be associated with the immaturity of brain areas involved in cognitive control functions. Particularly, "frontal lobe functions," such as executive functions and reasoning, mature until young adulthood and are thought to be involved in age-related changes in decision making under explicit risk conditions. We investigated 112 participants, aged 8-19 years, with a frequently used task assessing decisions under risk, the Game of Dice Task (GDT). Additionally, we administered the Modified Card Sorting Test assessing executive functioning (categorization, cognitive flexibility, and strategy maintenance) as well as the Ravens Progressive Matrices assessing reasoning. The results showed that risk taking in the GDT decreased with increasing age and this effect was not moderated by reasoning but by executive functions: Particularly, young persons with weak executive functioning showed very risky decision making. Thus, the individual maturation of executive functions, associated with areas in the prefrontal cortex, seems to be an important factor in young peoples' behavior in risky decision-making situations.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09297049.2014.934216 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Japi 2.0, a gaming platform to stimulate cognitive and non-cognitive skills in early childhood: protocol for a pilot randomized controlled trial.
Pilot Feasibility Stud
January 2025
Department of Health Service & Population Research, David Goldberg Centre, King's College London, Denmark Hill, London, UK.
Background: Mental health disorders are one of the leading causes of illness globally. The importance of psychosocial skills acquired in early childhood, such as executive functions, inhibitory control, emotional regulation, and social problem-solving, in preventing mental disorders has been reported. Furthermore, mental health care delivery is evolving, and mobile technology is becoming the medium for assessment and intervention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurological post-COVID syndrome is associated with substantial impairment of verbal short-term and working memory.
Sci Rep
January 2025
Department of Neurology, St. Josef-Hospital, Ruhr-University Bochum, Gudrunstr. 56, 44791, Bochum, Germany.
A substantial proportion of patients suffer from Post-COVID Syndrome (PCS) with fatigue and impairment of memory and concentration being the most important symptoms. We here set out to perform in-depth neuropsychological assessment of PCS patients referred to the Neurologic PCS clinic compared to patients without sequelae after COVID-19 (non-PCS) and healthy controls (HC) to decipher the most prevalent cognitive deficits. We included n = 60 PCS patients with neurologic symptoms, n = 15 non-PCS patients and n = 15 healthy controls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDefault mode network functional connectivity as a transdiagnostic biomarker of cognitive function.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
January 2025
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Brain and Cognitive Science at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Psychology, Northeastern University. Electronic address:
The default mode network (DMN) is intricately linked with processes such as self-referential thinking, episodic memory recall, goal-directed cognition, self-projection, and theory of mind. Over recent years, there has been a surge in examining its functional connectivity, particularly its relationship with frontoparietal networks (FPN) involved in top-down attention, executive function, and cognitive control. The fluidity in switching between these internal and external modes of processing-highlighted by anti-correlated functional connectivity-has been proposed as an indicator of cognitive health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo Decades of the Walking While Talking Test: A Narrative Review.
J Am Med Dir Assoc
January 2025
Department of Neurology, Renaissance School of Medicine, Stony Brook, NY, United States.
Objectives: Early research reported that older adults who stopped walking when they began a conversation were more likely to fall in the future. As a systematic measure of dual-task performance, Verghese and colleagues developed the Walking While Talking (WWT) test, in which a person walks at a normal pace while reciting alternate letters of the alphabet. The present paper highlights key findings from the 2 decades of research using the WWT test.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNegative impact of self-reported executive problems in patients with functional/dissociative seizures: Results from a prospective long-term observational study.
Seizure
January 2025
The National Centre for Epilepsy, Division of Clinical Neuroscience, Full Member of European Reference Network on Rare and Complex Epilepsies EpiCARE, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway; Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Objective: Functional/dissociative seizures (FDS) are common and pose a considerable burden on both individual patients and healthcare systems. Cognitive complaints are frequent in patients with FDS. Previous studies on cognitive function in patients with FDS have yielded mixed results.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!