When Do those \u201cRisk-Taking Adolescents\u201d Take Risks? The Combined Effects of Risk Encouragement by Peers, Mild-to-Borderline Intellectual Disability and Sex

Annematt L. Collot d’Escury-Koenigs,Elske Salemink,Anika Bexkens,Tycho J. Dekkers,Eline Wagemaker,Hilde M. Huizenga

doi:10.1007/s10802-020-00617-8

Abstract

Adolescents with mild to borderline intellectual disability (MBID) show more daily life risk taking than typically developing adolescents. To obtain insight in when these “risk-taking adolescents” especially take risks, we investigated main and interaction effects of (a) MBID, (b) sex, and (c) type of peer influence on risk taking. The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) was used as a proxy of real-life risk taking. 356 adolescents (12–19 years, 51.7% MBID, 63.4% boys) were randomly assigned to one of three BART peer-influence conditions: solo (no peers), positive risk encouragement (e.g., ‘You are cool if you continue’) or negative risk encouragement (e.g., ‘You are a softy if you do not continue’). The main finding was that boys with MBID took more risks than typically developing boys in the negative risk encouragement condition. Boys with MBID also took more risks in the negative risk encouragement condition compared to the solo condition, whereas typically developing boys did not. There were no such effects for girls. Surprisingly, boys with MBID took less risks in the solo condition than typically developing boys. We conclude that boys with MBID especially show high risk taking when peers belittle or threat with exclusion from the peer group. Prevention and intervention programs should specifically target boys with MBID to teach them to resist negative risk encouragement by peers.

Highlights

Adolescents with mild to borderline intellectual disability (MBID) show more daily life risk taking than typically developing adolescents
Intellectual disability is characterized by lower riskawareness (Greenspan et al 2011), and vignette studies suggest that adolescents with MBID especially struggle to make safe decisions under peer influence (Khemka et al 2009)
From the 382 recruited participants, 17 participants were excluded for the following reasons: the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) was not finished (4), some trials of the BART were missing (1), the number of adjusted pumps equalled zero because none of the balloons were sold (1), Raven’s SPM scores were missing (2), Raven’s SPM score equalled 0 (3), or Resistance to Peer Influence Scale (RPI) scores were missing (6). 13 of the 17 excluded participants belonged to the MBID group

Summary

Introduction

Adolescents with mild to borderline intellectual disability (MBID) show more daily life risk taking than typically developing adolescents. Based on their research and earlier findings, high risk taking in adolescence has been related to sensation seeking, impulsivity, low cognitive control, and low educational levels (Bjork and Pardini 2015; Harakeh et al 2012; Jessor 1992) These characteristics are often overly represented in adolescents with mild to borderline intellectual disability (MBID; e.g., Bexkens et al, 2014). From the perspective of the imbalance model, increased susceptibility to peer influence in adolescents with MBID could be explained by a larger imbalance between social-emotional and cognitive control systems This claim has not been investigated at a neurobiological level, there is ample evidence that adolescents with MBID have inhibition deficits as compared to typically developing adolescents (see Bexkens et al 2014 for a meta-analysis; Schuiringa et al 2017), and inhibition is an important component of cognitive control (Ridderinkhof et al 2004).

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