Teens and concequences (virgin, America, myth, experience, sex)

[painted wolf]

Apparently teens really can't grasp long term concequences of thier actions like adults can. A study done by Dartmouth Professor of Cognitive Science Abigail Baird showed that teens take longer and use different parts of the bran to make such decisions.

In Baird’s experiment, carried out with colleague Jonathan Fugelsang, teenagers and adults were shown scenarios on a computer screen, such as eating a salad or swimming with sharks. The subjects had to judge whether each was safe or dangerous. Both groups took longer to decide a scenario was dangerous, but this difference was greater in teenagers. Adults took 1.6 seconds longer to reach a decision while teenagers took 1.75 seconds more.
Brain scans taken during the test show that the prefrontal cortex was more active in the teens, suggesting they were making a greater effort to judge the results of each situation. The adults had more basal ganglia activity, pointing to a more automatic response, Baird told a meeting on Law and the Brain at the Institute of Advanced Legal studies, part of University College London, UK, this week.

rest of the article here: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996738
Abigail Baird's site here: http://www.theteenbrain.com/latest/
http://www.theteenbrain.com/

should information like this impact the way we teach teens about things like sex, drugs and crime? Perhaps our old methods, (treating teens like small adults or big kids) need to be changed.

wa:do

[Sunstone]

I heard on NPR a while back that teens sixteen and younger have an especially hard time with foresight, and that this was a reason that courts were moving to adjust their sentencing guidelines to reflect the fact.

[Runt]

Well, teenagers do have less experience than adults with dangerous situations. A young child will look at a cactus and not even stop to think about whether or not it is dangerous to touch those sharp pointy things. An older child, however, has either personal experience with cacti, or has heard stories of what has happened to others who touch them, or has had experience with other sharp pointy objects that lets them know that "gee, touching that cactus might hurt". I imagine that teenagers suffer from a similar lack of experience (only more minimal), which influences that slower decision-making time.

[Scuba Pete]

Whoa... swimming with sharks is dangerous? Whou woulda thunk up THAT myth?

BTW, have you ever wondered why sharks never attack attorneys? Professional Courtesey!

[Lintu]

I'm not sure if it's a lack of experience. When I was a teen, I would regularly drive 10 miles over the speed limit. Now that I'm an adult, I'm a lot more careful. Now, I certainly knew then as I do now that you can get pulled over for 10 over, but I did it then anyway. I have no idea why I changed on that.

[Watcher]

So many teens now a days just don't THINK before they do anything. I am in High School, and know so many girls that aren't virgins any longer. There is one girl that I know, and she recently (like, a few days ago) had sex with her boyfriend for the first time, and she is a freshman! A FRESHMAN!!!! What is wrong with America! On top of that, she is slightly worried that she might have gotten pregant. Everybody thinks "What's the big deal? Everybody is doing it? What are the chances that I would get pregnant?" Well, as I hope she doesn't have to find out, the chances are quite large. It makes me sad to see my peers are not able to control themselves. I was talking to one friend (okay, only kinda a friend) and said that I thought high school (as well as pre-marital) sex and one night stands were just wrong. She replied, "I don't. Who cares who you're getting some from, as long as your getting some." It makes me sick.