The development of decision-making

To describe what is currently known and not known about the development of decision-making skills during adolescence.

The author provides a definition of competent decision-making, gives a brief overview of the literature on the development of this competence, and describes the kinds of studies that should be conducted in the near future.

Although the literature is still too sparse to be conclusive at present, the literature as a whole suggests that adolescents may have less decision-making competence than adults in certain areas (i.e., advice-seeking, evaluation processes, adaptive goal-setting, and learning) but may have similar levels of competence in other areas (i.e., knowledge of options in familiar areas, response to certain moderating factors, and making choices in a number of areas). Moreover, age differences in deliberative aspects of competence have not yet been linked to age differences in the tendency to pursue good options, although one recent study did find a possible link between a post-decisional process (i.e., learning from decisions) and age differences in the selection of good options. Additional studies are needed to firm up the tentative conclusions that can be drawn from the extant research and determine which kinds of interventions improve decision-making in adolescents and which do not.