Spring 08
FEATURED ARTICLES
 
Minding Their Own Business: Temple Women Embody the Entrepreneurial Spirit
Understanding the teen brain could mean a more effective juvenile justice system
Story by Greg Fornia | illustrations by Jude Buffum, Tyl '01
 
Running a stop sign, posting a raunchy picture or rant online, participating in an extreme sport without the benefit of protective gear: Today's teenagers seem like they are hard-wired to take risks. Temple University's Laurence Steinberg is studying adolescent behavior to discover why young people can be so impulsive, and his research is challenging long-held views of the criminal culpability of juvenile offenders.
 
According to Steinberg, Distinguished University Professor and the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts, a remodeling of circuitry in the brain during puberty that plays an important role in how people process reward and pleasure and interpret emotional information, such as people's facial expressions, and social information, such as people's behavior toward us. These changes are partly caused by an increased number of dopamine receptors — an important neurotransmitter for the experience of reward — in the adolescent brain. "The human socio-emotional system is retooled during puberty," says Steinberg, "in a way that makes kids more sensitive to reward, more easily aroused emotionally and more attentive to social information." Philadelphia
 
The result of these changes is an increase in sensation- and thrill-seeking behavior during early adolescence. "Rewards like money and food feel more rewarding to an adolescent," says Steinberg. "Knowing that other teens think they are cool — the social feedback — lights up that same circuitry."

While the socio-emotional system is changing rapidly in young people, another important brain system is maturing much more slowly. Called the cognitive control system, this part of the brain is engaged when we plan ahead, control impulses and balance risk and reward. "It is a deliberative thinking system," says Steinberg, "and there is some evidence that this system is still maturing well into our 20s."

With vastly different maturation timetables, the connection and interplay between the socio-emotional and cognitive control systems is still underdeveloped during adolescence. "Communication between the two systems allows for better coordination between feeling and thinking," explains Steinberg. "It's what enables adults to put the brakes on an impulse because they have thought through the consequences."
 
Risk and the peer effect
Taking the ‘brake' metaphor a step further, Steinberg is studying how adolescents and adults react to a situation many of us face almost daily: the yellow light. In a computer simulation called "The Stoplight Game," participants — in pursuit of a cash prize based on overall performance — must travel a road filled with stoplights. Participants decide whether to run the yellow or stop, which delays their progress and lessens their chances of getting the prize. In the game, there are only three possibilities: run an intersection successfully with no time lost; stop and wait for the green light, with some time lost; and crash in the intersection, with much time lost.

Preliminary results vividly show how the presence of peers changes kids' behavior. When engaged in the simulation alone, there is no difference in how three groups — adolescents, Temple students and adults in their 30s — performed; that is, how many times they ran the yellow light. "But when you put peers in the room with the subjects, the risk-taking behavior of adolescents doubled and the risk-taking behavior of college students rose by fifty percent," explains Steinberg, who notes there was no impact on the risk-taking behavior of adults when they performed for their peers. "Having peers in the room, or just knowing they are watching in another room, increased the number of times adolescents sped through the intersection."

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technology used to view the structure of the brain and to show the relationship between physical changes in the brain, like blood flow, and mental functioning, Steinberg is studying the brain activity of a small sample of participants while they played the game. "We see different patterns of brain activity for the same task depending on whether the subjects know their friends are watching," explains Steinberg, who is collaborating on the fMRI work with Psychology Department Assistant Professor Jason Chein. "The presence of peers activates this socio-emotional system in distinct areas of the brain, which may make things more rewarding."

 
Juvenile crime and culpability
The result of a teen's risky behavior could be a reallife car crash, but it could also be a crime. When compared to adults, adolescents are more impulsive and emotionally volatile. Violence toward others tends to peak in the adolescent years. That's a potent mix for igniting criminal behavior. But are adolescents, whose brains are still developing, as criminally culpable as adults for the crimes they commit? Should young offenders, particularly violent ones, be sentenced as adults or as kids?

According to Steinberg, under current criminal law, adolescent offenders are treated either as blameless children or as fully responsible adults. "Less Guilty by Reason of Adolescence," an article in American Psychologist Steinberg co-authored with Elizabeth S. Scott of Columbia Law School, argues that juveniles should not be held to the same standards of criminal responsibility as adults because adolescents' decisionmaking capacity is diminished. The paper, which stressed immaturity as a mitigating factor that underscores the need for a separate justice system where youth are not eligible for capital punishment, was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Roper v. Simmons case. The majority in that 2005 ruling held that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18. "That banned the juvenile death penalty in the United States," says Steinberg. "The juvenile justice system should hold kids accountable for their actions, but it should not punish them in the ways, or as severely, as we punish adults."

The problem with treating kids as adults, according to Steinberg, is that imprisonment may hurt their chances of becoming responsible adults. Research shows that kids who are tried, prosecuted and punished as adults are, when released, more likely to re-offend and reoffend sooner than kids who committed the same crime and who were tried and punished as juveniles. "If the goal is to diminish the chances of someone reoffending, then we do not want to punish people in a way that will make them offend more," says Steinberg. "Over the last 15 years the American justice system may have become so punitive that it might be contributing to the problem."

For Steinberg, the ideal juvenile justice system would not prosecute children younger than 15 as adults, regardless of the crime. Mandated sentences would be dropped in favor of returning sentencing discretion to judges, who have the experience to sort out each unique case. "Finally, incarceration would be limited to juveniles who have committed their second violent offense," says Steinberg. "First offenders would receive communitybased punishments, such as probation and communitybased family services."

Steinberg is not against incapacitating — locking up — juvenile offenders, but the facility should be designed specifically for young people with appropriate educational, vocational and mental health services. "Some kids are violent and dangerous and the community needs to be protected," says Steinberg. "But not all kids need to be locked up. I think you want the least restrictive punishment that will still protect the community."