Adolescents Sample More Information Prior to Decisions than Adults when Effort Costs Increase

Adolescence is marked by increased agency in decision-making and an accompanying increase in risky and impulsive decision-making. Making better decisions typically requires obtaining information relevant to that decision, suggesting that one explanation for increased risky and impulsive behavior in adolescence is a tendency to make ill- informed decisions. Adolescents could be especially averse to the effort associated with acquiring information. To investigate this possibility, we recruited adolescents (13-17 years old) in upper-secondary schools and young adults (17-47 years old) attending university in the Netherlands to complete an effort-based information sampling task, in which participants could sample information until obtaining sufficient evidence to make a decision, and effort costs for sampling were systematically varied. Surprisingly, adolescents sampled more evidence than adults before making decisions when sampling effort costs were low; further, adolescents obtained stronger evidence prior to their decisions than adults as effort costs increased, exhibiting less aversion to effort costs associated with information sampling. Computational models supported these findings. Both adolescents and adults used simple heuristics in deciding whether to sample additional information or make a final decision, and adolescents sought a higher evidence threshold before deciding compared with adults. These results suggest that adolescents may require more certainty to make decisions compared with adults and be less averse to effort costs when gathering information to aid decisions.