根据双系统的观点,在青春期冒险高峰,因为激活早期成熟的社会情感激励处理系统会放大青少年对兴奋的亲和力,愉快,以及在尚不成熟的认知控制系统还不足以持续抑制潜在危险冲动的时候进行的新颖活动。我们回顾了自2008年以来出现的心理学和神经影像学文献的证据,当时这个观点最初被阐明。尽管一般趋势偶尔会有例外,研究表明,正如预测的那样,奖励敏感性的心理和神经表现在童年和青春期之间增加,在青少年后期的某个时候达到顶峰,然后下降,而更好的认知控制的心理和神经反射在整个青春期和20年代初逐渐线性增加。虽然某些形式的现实世界的危险行为在比预测的年龄晚的时候达到峰值,这可能反映出青春期后期和成年后冒险的机会不同,而不是神经生物学差异使这个年龄组更加鲁莽。尽管无可否认,这过于简单化了,作为一种启发式装置,与将青少年鲁莽归因于认知缺陷的先前模型相比,双重系统模型提供了更准确的青少年风险承担情况。
According to the dual systems perspective, risk taking peaks during adolescence because activation of an early-maturing socioemotional-incentive processing system amplifies adolescents\' affinity for exciting, pleasurable, and novel activities at a time when a still immature cognitive control system is not yet strong enough to consistently restrain potentially hazardous impulses. We
review evidence from both the psychological and neuroimaging literatures that has emerged since 2008, when this perspective was originally articulated. Although there are occasional exceptions to the general trends, studies show that, as predicted, psychological and neural manifestations of reward sensitivity increase between childhood and adolescence, peak sometime during the late teen years, and decline thereafter, whereas psychological and neural reflections of better cognitive control increase gradually and linearly throughout adolescence and into the early 20s. While some forms of real-world risky behavior peak at a later age than predicted, this likely reflects differential opportunities for risk-taking in late adolescence and young adulthood, rather than neurobiological differences that make this age group more reckless. Although it is admittedly an oversimplification, as a heuristic device, the dual systems model provides a far more accurate account of adolescent risk taking than prior models that have attributed adolescent recklessness to cognitive deficiencies.