Marie Good

Examining the link between adolescent brain development and risk taking from a social-developmental perspective.

The adolescent age period is often characterized as a health paradox because it is a time of extensive increases in physical and mental capabilities, yet overall mortality/morbidity rates increase significantly from childhood to adolescence, often due to preventable causes such as risk taking. Asynchrony in developmental time courses between the affective/approach and cognitive control brain systems, as well as the ongoing maturation of neural connectivity are thought to lead to increased vulnerability for risk taking in adolescence. A critical analysis of the frequency of risk taking behaviors, as well as mortality and morbidity rates across the lifespan, however, challenges the hypothesis that the peak of risk taking occurs in middle adolescence when the asynchrony between the different developmental time courses of the affective/approach and cognitive control systems is the largest. In fact, the highest levels of risk taking behaviors, such as alcohol and drug use, often occur among emerging adults (e.g., university/college students), and highlight the role of the social context in predicting risk taking behavior. Moreover, risk taking is not always unregulated or impulsive. Future research should broaden the scope of risk taking to include risks that are relevant to older adults, such as risky financial investing, gambling, and marital infidelity. In addition, a lifespan perspective, with a focus on how associations between neural systems and behavior are moderated by context and trait-level characteristics, and which includes diverse samples (e.g., divorced individuals), will help to address some important limitations in the adolescent brain development and risk taking literature.

Stability and Change in Adolescent Spirituality/Religiosity: A Person-Centered Approach.

Although there has been a substantial increase over the past decade in studies that have examined the psychosocial correlates of spirituality/religiosity in adolescence, very little is known about spirituality/religiosity as a domain of development in its own right. To address this limitation, the authors identified configurations of multiple dimensions of spirituality/religiosity across 2 time points with an empirical classification procedure (cluster analysis) and assessed development in these configurations at the sample and individual level. Participants included 756 predominately Canadian-born adolescents (53% female, 47% male) from southern Ontario, Canada, who completed a survey in Grade 11 (M age = 16.41 years) and Grade 12 (M age = 17.36 years). Measures included religious activity involvement, enjoyment of religious activities, the Spiritual Transcendence Index, wondering about spiritual issues, frequency of prayer, and frequency of meditation. Sample-level development (structural stability and change) was assessed by examining whether the structural configurations of the clusters were consistent over time. Individual-level development was assessed by examining intraindividual stability and change in cluster membership over time. Results revealed that a five cluster-solution was optimal at both grades. Clusters were identified as aspiritual/irreligious, disconnected wonderers, high institutional and personal, primarily personal, and meditators. With the exception of the high institutional and personal cluster, the cluster structures were stable over time. There also was significant intraindividual stability in all clusters over time; however, a significant proportion of individuals classified as high institutional and personal in Grade 11 moved into the primarily personal cluster in Grade 12.

Does the Direction of Effects in the Association Between Depressive Symptoms and Health-Risk Behaviors Differ by Behavior? A Longitudinal Study Across the High School Years

PURPOSE Adolescence is associated with the onset of depressive symptoms as well as significant increases in health-risk behaviors. Potential explanations for the direction of effects in the association between depressive symptoms and health-risk behaviors include the self-medication/acting out hypothesis (i.e., early depressive symptoms predict increases in risk behaviors over time) and the failure hypothesis (i.e., early participation in health-risk behaviors predicts increases in depressive symptoms over time). The purpose of the present longitudinal study was to assess these competing hypotheses across the high school years, and to examine whether the direction of effects (and therefore the self-medication/acting out and failure hypotheses) may differ depending on the type of risk behavior under consideration. METHODS The sample consisted of 4,412 adolescents (49% female) who were followed up from grade nine to 12. Adolescents reported on their depressive symptoms and six health-risk behaviors (frequency of alcohol use, amount of alcohol consumed per drinking episode, cigarette smoking, marijuana use, hard drug use, and delinquency). Analyses were conducted with dual trajectory growth curve modeling. RESULTS Adolescents who had higher depressive symptoms in grade nine reported faster increases than their peers in smoking, marijuana, and hard drug use across the high school years, supporting the self-medication hypothesis. The failure hypothesis was not supported. CONCLUSION The results are important because they suggest that by targeting depressive symptoms during early adolescence, treatment programs may prevent increases in the frequency of these risk behaviors later in adolescence.

The need to believe: a neuroscience account of religion as a motivated process

Religious belief has been shown to offer substantial benefits to its adherents, including improved well-being and health. We suggest that these benefits might be explained, at least in part, from a “motivated meaning-making” perspective. This model holds that people are motivated to create and sustain meaning (i.e., a sense of coherency between beliefs, goals, and perceptions of the environment, which provides individuals with the feeling that the world is an orderly place), and that religious beliefs buffer the distress associated with disruptions to meaning, thus leading to decreases in distress. We further propose that religions palliative attributes can be measured at the level of the brain, specifically in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which produces a “distress signal” upon the detection of errors, conflict, and expectancy violation. Using a social neuroscience paradigm, we investigate four main predictions that arise from this model: (1) religion should be associated with activation in the ACC; (2) religion should decrease activation in the ACC; (3) this attenuation of ACC activity should be related to religions ability to buffer bodily states of distress, and not to decreases in motivation, attention, or control; (4) religion should have these effects because it provides meaning and thus buffers people from uncertainty. All predictions were supported, thus providing evidence, at the neural level, for the motivated meaning-making models account of the salutary properties of religion.

A preliminary examination of the specificity of the functions of nonsuicidal self-injury among a sample of university students.

To examine whether individuals who engage in NSSI report different coping behaviors and regulatory needs compared to a non-injuring comparison group, we surveyed 1107 undergraduates using a Functions Index. Individuals who engaged in NSSI indicated greater use of coping behaviors for anti-dissociation, interpersonal influence, and self-punishment than the non-NSSI group.

Evaluating the direction of effects in the relationship between religious versus non-religious activities, academic success, and substance use.

This longitudinal study tested the influence of involvement and selection hypotheses for the association between religious versus non-religious activity involvement and two salient indicators of adolescent psychosocial adjustment (substance use and academic achievement). Participants included 3,993 Canadian adolescents (49.4% girls) who were surveyed each year from grades 9–12. More frequent religious attendance (but not non-religious club involvement) in one grade predicted lower levels of substance use in the next grade. Higher levels of non-religious club involvement (but not religious service attendance) in one grade predicted higher academic achievement in the next grade, and higher academic achievement in one grade predicted more frequent non-religious club involvement in the next grade. The effects were robust, as they were invariant across grade and significant after controlling for individual, peer, and family characteristics. Most importantly, these results suggest that religious activities are not just another club, but, rather, that different developmental assets may be fostered in religious as compared to non-religious activities.

Just Another Club? The Distinctiveness of the Relation Between Religious Service Attendance and Adolescent Psychosocial Adjustment

This study used hierarchical linear modeling to compare longitudinal patterns of adolescent religious service attendance and club attendance, and to contrast the longitudinal relations between adolescent adjustment and religious service versus club attendance. Participants included 1050 students (47% girls) encompassing a school district in Canada, who completed the survey first in grade nine and again in grades 11 and 12. Results demonstrated that patterns of religious service attendance over time were quite different from other clubs. Religious attendance was uniquely associated with several indicators of positive as well as negative adjustment. Club involvement, conversely, was only associated with positive adjustment––particularly for individuals who reported sustained involvement over time. Findings suggest that religious services may provide some unique experiences––both positive and negative––over and above what may be provided in other clubs, and that sustained, rather than sporadic participation in clubs, may be especially important for adolescent adjustment.

The triadic systems model perspective and adolescent risk taking

In this special issue, Ernst (2014) outlines the triadic systems model, which focuses on the balanced interaction among three functional neural systems: the prefrontal cortex (regulation/control), striatum (motivation/approach), and amygdala (emotion/avoidance). Asynchrony in maturation timelines, coupled with less mature connectivity across brain regions, is thought to result in unique vulnerabilities for risk taking during the adolescent age period. Yet, the research evidence linking the triadic systems model to differences in risk taking across adolescence and adulthood is equivocal, and few studies have examined how neural development is associated with real-world behavior. In this commentary, we outline research on adolescent risk taking which highlights the importance of considering trait level and situational conditions when examining associations between neural systems and behavior, as well as the need to adopt a lifespan perspective.

Existential neuroscience: a proximate explanation of religion as flexible meaning and palliative

The cognitive science of religion has made great strides in the past decade (e.g., Boyer, 2008), with more and better research from many disciplines asking basic questions about why religions exist, persist, thrive, and heal. The journal that is publishing these very words, Religion, Brain & Behavior, is testament to the accelerating nature of this interdisciplinary movement, as is the breadth and quality of the commentaries that our target article generated. We are grateful that these commentaries have forced us not only to think deeply about the ideas contained therein, but also to elaborate upon our own model. Rather than addressing each reply in turn, we built our response around the major themes that emerged. Overall, there was consensus satisfaction with our basic neuroscience findings linking religious belief with brain-based error-related distress. There was less satisfaction, however, with the way we broadly interpreted these data. Paying heed to the most frequent questions and ideas put forth by the commentators, we organized our response as follows: we (1) discuss our use of the term ‘‘meaning,’’ (2) contrast the kind of proximate explanations provided by the motivated meaning model with ultimate explanations provided by evolutionary models, (3) provide evidence for why flexible meaning systems like religion may be better palliatives than scrutable meaning systems like science, and (4) suggest that an affective interpretation of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity accounts for more data than a purely cognitive explanation, but also note that both explanations might be functionally isomorphic. We end by mapping out the kinds of future studies that we are now planning and that were inspired by the valuable commentaries.