NCJ Number
209066
Journal
Prison Journal Volume: 85 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2005 Pages: 83-96
Date Published
March 2005
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This study compared substance and criminally-involved youth (SCI) with an ethnically, geographically, and socioeconomically equivalent cohort of youth who managed to avoid drug use and criminal behavior on cognitive markers using the Tower of Hanoi (TOH) performance.
Abstract
Adolescents, almost by definition, are risk takers. Behavioral traits associated with adolescent risk taking may be correlated with maturational events occurring in the brain. This study compared substance-involved adolescents with a control group of resilient youth on their Tower of Hanoi (TOH) performance, a psychological indicator used to assess frontal lobe functioning (planning and problem-solving). Participants in the study were drawn from two sources: (1) substance and criminally-involved (SCI) adolescents participating in a residential program for substance abuse treatment and (2) resilient (R) adolescents in an Air Force Junior ROTC program in high school. The task used was a three-disk version of the TOH problem. Subjects were presented with a model display with three size-graded disks, from largest to smallest, with the leftmost post in the model. The goal of the task was to move all the disks from the leftmost post over to the rightmost post. The results of the data appeared to be unambiguous. Overall, performance on the TOH and possibly performance on other tasks that presume to tap frontal lobe function, could serve as potential predictors of future drug use, criminal activity, and incarceration. Resilient youths made fewer moves and spent more time per move. Their substance-involved counterparts made more moves and spent less time per move, a strategy that could be construed as impulsive. References