ABSTRACT
Risk is a common topic in discussions about teenagers. This chapter outlines recent thinking to do with the special place that rewards play for this age group and indicate why the author believe this evidence has particular relevance for teachers. Larry Steinberg outlines a theory of adolescent risk-taking in his book The age of opportunity. D. Romer, and other writers who take a similar view, believe that there is a good reason why the teenage brain works as it does. These authors argue that risk-taking reflects a biological drive for exploration. There have been many laboratory studies trying to understand how the teenage brain works in the context of risk-taking. Dopamine plays a big role in the teenage brain. There are dopamine receptors in the young person’s brain than there are in the adult brain. The results showed that young people demonstrate more activity in the reward processing area of the brain than adults when they win on the task.
