VariabiliTeen · Decomposing the variability in teenagers’ decision-making

Why do teenagers often seem to engage in seemingly reckless or unpredictable behavior? Why do they make more variable or inconsistent decisions than other age groups? Remarkably, we currently still lack the understanding of where this choice variability originates from. My project will investigate two complementary hypotheses: 1) ongoing neural development leads to imprecise learning about option values, resulting in suboptimal decision-making, and 2) the adolescent-specific volatile and unpredictable social environment might render it adaptive to explore more information about alternative options, thereby sometimes foregoing to opt the current best option.To disentangle these hypotheses, I will computationally decompose participants’ choice variability into the cognitive processes of imprecise learning versus directed exploration, while they make choices in a social versus a non-social context. I will test a large group of adolescents and compare their decisions to those of children and adults. My working hypothesis is that a volatile social environment, as assessed by self-reports, makes adolescents more biased toward exploring more information about alternatives, an effect that will be more pronounced in a social versus a non-social context.My experience in developmental cognitive neuroscience, combined with the host group’s expertise in computational modeling of uncertainty and cognitive processing and their position within the Paris Brain Institute (ICM), the largest research institute for neuroscience in France, are expected to generate empirical foundations to advance our models of developmental decision-making. This proposal anticipates to bring together researchers and theories of cognitive development and computational neuroscience, as well as educational policy makers. It will allow me to strengthen my skills in computational modeling and theories of decision-making, and launch my career as an independent researcher.