title: Do adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder show risk seeking? Disentangling probabilistic decision making by equalizing the favorability of alternatives.
abstract: The clinical literature provides evidence for increased risk taking by individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Most of the experimental tasks used to measure risk taking, confounded risky and disadvantageous alternatives, and therefore did not disentangle increased risk seeking from suboptimal decision making. The aim of the study was to examine whether adolescents with ADHD show risk seeking by equalizing the expected value of both certain and risky alternatives. In 3 different samples, adolescents with and without ADHD performed gambling tasks, in which they had to choose between certain and risky alternatives. Notably, the expected values of both alternatives were equal. Various personal and contextual intervening factors were controlled for. The rate of risky choices was compared across groups. In addition, participants reported on risk taking in real-life. We found that adolescents with ADHD did not choose the risky alternative more often than controls, but reported higher engagement in real-life risky behavior. These findings suggest that risky behavior shown by people with ADHD in daily life and on some experimental tasks may not be accounted for by increased risk seeking, but rather may reflect suboptimal decision making.
authors.affiliation: School of Education, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
authors.forename: Yehuda
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Pollak
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
authors.forename: Adi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Oz
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
authors.forename: Oded
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Neventsal
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
authors.forename: Orit
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Rabi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
authors.forename: Leah
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kitrossky
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
authors.forename: Adina
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Maeir
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000523:psychology*; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012309:Risk-Taking