Psychosocial development and the implications for juvenile justice

Research suggests that social factors are an important influence on why adolescents engage in risky or criminal behavior. A psychosocial model evaluates the interaction between an individual’s thoughts, behaviors, and social factors. Psychosocial models provide a comprehensive and effective methods and opens up more treatment options. The psychosocial model is important in understanding juvenile delinquency, as it integrates the significant impact social environment has on adolescents, along with their psychological development and how that affects their potential for offending. However, one cannot fully understand social development without understanding how the brains of adolescents are changing. I will briefly discuss important brain processes and changes such as the process of synaptic pruning and myelination, as well as neurochemical changes. These structures are important in mediating emotions, impulsivity, and executive functioning, all things involved in interacting and making decisions. The changing adolescent brain is more susceptible to peer pressure.

Research in this area focuses on the extent to which juveniles can be held accountable for their actions by the law, as their brains are not fully formed and rely heavily on social interactions to guide their behaviors. More broadly, this research can be applied to other areas of psychology, particularly social psychology, because it strengthens evidence for the importance of peer pressure and relationships. It can also inform public policy and how the law defines and punishes juvenile delinquency. This applies to all criminal or maladaptive behavior, as it does not just affect the individual but also the community or society in which they live.

**Adolescent Brain Development**

The brain is continuously changing, creating, and destroying neural connections throughout life. Connections that are used are strengthened, and those that are not used are pruned away to create more efficient neural processing. This process is called synaptic pruning and occurs most abundantly in late childhood and early adolescence. This is important to social and psychological development because cognitive maturity is still underdeveloped. Cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills often develop earlier in adolescence than psychological and social markers like the ability to think about the future, resist peer pressure, respond less impulsively, and therefore, make better judgements in “real-world” scenarios. This shows that because significant pruning is occurring and the psychosocial markers are not well developed, adolescents are especially prone to their surroundings and the influence of others. Adolescents are not able to adequately evaluate potential risks for their actions and are unable to resist social pressures.

Another important neural process that occurs during adolescence is myelination. Myelin is fatty white tissue that grows around neurons to insulate them, increasing the speed of neural messages arriving at their destinations. It preserves neural connectivity and functions of a healthy nervous system. Myelination is important for higher order functions such as delaying response, planning, cost and benefit analysis, and processing of information from multiple sources. This process is just beginning in adolescence and will continue into adulthood. So, although teenagers can engage in these higher order cognitive tasks, they can only do so at surface level. For example, they may be able to think about immediate cost and benefits but not long-term.

Lastly, neurochemicals are rapidly changing during adolescence. Major changes tend to occur right after puberty ends. Most notably, dopamine, an important neurotransmitter, increases, which heightens the sensation of reward. In the context of this paper, reward for an adolescent would be the approval of their peers, and this is often a reason adolescents may give for doing something: “I wanted to fit in.” Social connections are a motivating reward for teenagers. Also, because teenagers have increased dopamine and a reduced ability to control impulsivity, adolescents may engage in risky behaviors more often. They are seeking social approval along with immediate gratification. There is a neurological “gap” between puberty and later development. Puberty is a time of increased sensation-seeking, and at the same time, the ability to self-regulator is slowly coming into play. Therefore, judgement is immature during adolescence. The author’s implication for juvenile offending is that there is a disconnect between sensation-seeking and mature judgement that may make adolescents or juveniles unable to be held completely accountable for their actions, or at least should be scrutinized deeply before sentencing. In the next section, I will go into detail about the research behind this claim.

**Social Impacts on Adolescents**

Several of the research articles I found supported the hypothesis that the presence of peers increases risky behavior in adolescents. Adolescents seem to have a tough time controlling their “hot” reactions. In other words, the context of the situation matters. In this study, adolescents completed a cognitive Stroop test and an emotional Stroop test. A Stroop test consists of the participant being presented with the name of a color and must press a key that matches the color of the word, not the word itself. Also, a risky driving task known as the Spotlight game was used. The Spotlight task is a driving simulation game where participants “drive” down a road with the goal of reaching the end as quickly as possible. Intersection lights turn yellow as the participant approaches, and they must decide whether to run it or stop. Adolescents’ cognitive control system matures gradually and more linearly while the incentive processing system seems to reach the height of reactivity in adolescence. Because the timing of these two processes is mismatched, adolescents experience an increase in reaction towards the rewards of risk-taking, but do not have enough control over their potentially dangerous impulses. The result of their study was that participants responded more quickly to the cognitive task versus the emotional task. These results support what is called the dual systems model; it suggests that “adolescent risk-taking arises from heightened reward-seeking in the face of under-developed cognitive control." The results also support the idea that the context of the situation is essential to making decisions and the underlying mechanisms, such as cognitive control and peer presence (“hot” situation).

A study that supports the idea of peer presence and decision-making focuses on neural systems specifically involved in cognitive control and socio-emotional context. Participants were hooked up to an fMRI while completing a response inhibition task to measure neural activity. The fMRI technique uses the connection between cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation. Blood flows to the area of the brain that is being used. A week later, they did a driving simulator, either alone or with a peer. The researchers used the independent variable of social context (with or without a peer) to moderate the “relationship between individual differences in neural activity in the hypothesized cognitive control network and risk-taking in the driving contest." The purpose of doing this was to make sure that the results found were due to the independent variable and not simply individual neural pathways as much as possible. Several significant results came from this study. Firstly, interactions between neural activity, the Response Inhibition network, and Passenger type predicting driving risk in the presence of a peer were significant. Secondly, observed risk-taking in social versus nonsocial conditions found that the effect depended on the social situation. Based on these findings, it can be said that individual differences and social context together are important indicators of risk. Striatal activity may be especially important to understanding peer influence during this developmental time period. Studies have shown that the dorsal and ventral striatum are important in regulating emotions in adolescents and may therefore be important in resisting peer influence. The findings in this study support the overall hypothesis of peer influence and certain brain areas being important in decision-making processes, although more research may need to be done to tease apart individual differences from the social context.

A study used a simulated driving task to measure risk preference of each peer group member. The adolescent participants were separated into gender and condition. The condition was either passive or active risk preference. The passive condition is the “passive pathway” of risk which describes “implicit norms, and perceived gains in peer status and approval that may be attained through risky choices”, and the active condition representing the “active pathway” of risk which describes “overt forms of pressure to engage in risk such as goading, urging or communicating disapproval around risky choices." The participants reported their own risk preference, and their peers reported their own risk preference. The results of this study were consistent with the importance of peer influence in decision and risk taking; it was found that risk preference is strongly correlated with peer risk preference. This means that adolescents and their peers’ preference for risk taking were similar. Adolescents had more crashes when communicating with risky peers and had few crashes when communicating with low risk-inclined peers. Also, their results suggest that peers’ primary influences on adolescent driving (and risk-taking in general), tend to be more active than passive.

**Limitations**

However, there is research that does not support the underdeveloped brain or the importance of social influence, or at least does not support these hypotheses to the same extent. One such study is a study that involved parents as well as peers. The researchers wanted to know how parents and peers affect the brain and risk-taking in adolescents because the specific effects are still unknown. The participants completed the Yellow Light Game (YLG) which is a computerized driving test where they can choose to make risky or safe decisions in the presence of a parent or peer. They were hooked up to an fMRI during the game to watch certain brain areas believed to be involved in social and cognitive regions such as the ventral striatum, temporo-parietal junction, and dorsal prefrontal cortex. The results were surprising: there were no effects of social context on risk-taking. The brain areas were in fact more active with peers than parents, and a functional connectivity analysis showed greater coupling between social and cognitive areas during decision making with parents than peers.

These results show that social contexts and cognition when it comes to decision-making is complex especially when it comes to parents versus peers and can produce further research in this area to better understand adolescents’ social sensitivity. Juveniles may be more competent than originally believed, and the laws and regulations for juveniles should be changed. Also, parents may have just as much influence on adolescents as peers, at least in some cases. Adolescent decision-making and social sensitivity may be more complicated than previously believed, and its implications may change many areas of study. Much more research must be conducted to get to the root causes of increased risky behavior and social pressures on adolescents.

**Implications**

Research on juvenile accountability and social and psychological development is important for psychology as well as other social areas. Forensic psychology and the criminal justice system in particular benefit from this research. The studies reviewed in this paper imply that it is right not to charge adolescents under eighteen as adults. Their brain is still developing in many important ways such as emotion regulation, cognitive control, and inhibiting risky behavior. Simply being in the presence of a peer can have an impact on the adolescent, but it seems that the context and the way that the peers are influencing them is important (e.g., active versus passive). Many times, juveniles who get in trouble with the law are in groups or gangs of peers that are involved in similar delinquent behaviors. Sometimes simply being in the presence of peers is enough, as shown by several of the driving tasks where risky behavior is increased when peers are present. However, it seems that active peer influence such as goading is even more likely to increase risky behavior. Because of this, juveniles involved in gangs of offenders are at extremely elevated risk of committing a crime and getting arrested. Certain areas of the brain seem to be involved in socio-emotional mechanisms and decision-making are underdeveloped in adolescents. This research can inform public policy and the law to make sure adolescents are getting fair treatment from the criminal justice system and can further emphasize the importance of mental health care in the criminal justice system.

More generally, research on adolescent brain development and behavior is relevant to every area of psychology. Social psychology benefits from new areas of research on peer influence, such as the brain areas involved in risk and reward as well as the areas involved in forming relationships. Neuropsychology can receive help from studying brain areas related to impulsivity and cost-benefit analysis. It can inform individual psychotherapy with adolescents as well. Clinicians can use these findings to better understand how the adolescent they are working with sees the world and navigates social situations. It may also help to explain delinquent behavior, or at least supply some guidance in how to approach solutions. Simply understanding that the adolescent brain is still developing and therefore so is their sense of self can be beneficial.

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5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 van Hoorn, J., McCormick, E. M., Rogers, C. R., Ivory, S. L., & Telzer, E. H. (2018).

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https://doi-org.libproxy.lib.ilstu.edu/10.1093/scan/nsy071.
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Cascio, C. N., Carp, J., OʼDonnell, M. B., Tinney, F. J., Jr., Bingham, C. R., Shope, J. T.,

Ouimet, M. C., Pradhan, A. K., Simons-Morton, B. G., & Falk, E. B. (2015). Buffering

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7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Centifanti, L. C. M., Modecki, K. L., MacLellan, S., & Gowling, H. (2016). Driving under the

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