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Article 1: Spear, L. (2013). The teenage brain: Adolescents and alcohol. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 152–157. doi:10.1177/0963721412472192

Learning Objective: 10.1 Discuss some of the main causes of children’s conduct problems across genetic, biological, psychological, familial, and social-cultural levels of analysis. Describe the key features of substance use disorders in adolescents and explain how adolescent substance use differs from adult substance use.

Summary: Spear considers research on adolescent alcohol sensitivity to help understand alcohol. Models in rats have age-related differences in alcohol sensitivity and limited data suggests that the same be true in humans.

Questions to Consider:

1. How can using animal models help us to learn about human behavior? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this work?
2. What evidence do we have from rats to help us understand age-related differences in alcohol use?
3. There is less research on humans, but what does it suggest? How do the animal and human results help us understand adolescent behavior?
    

Article 2: Conn, B. M., & Marks, A. K. (2017). An ecological approach to understanding adolescent prescription drug misuse. Journal of Adolescent Research, 32, 183–204. doi:10.1177/0743558415589369

Learning Objective: 10.2 Evaluate three major pathways for the development of substance use disorders in adolescents some of the main causes of children’s conduct problems across genetic, biological, psychological, familial, and social-cultural levels of analysis.

Summary: Twenty psychiatric inpatient adolescents participated in an interview study about non-medical use of prescription drugs to identify patterns of risk. Conn and Marks examined social and cognitive factors, identifying risks related to culturally related beliefs, socialization agents, and the media.

Questions to Consider:

1. What is a social ecological approach? Why did the authors select that approach for this study?
2. Prior to reading the results, what would you have expected to find? That is, what factors would you anticipate predicting this drug use? Were your expectations supported?
3. What are the implications of this research for the prevention of non-medical use of prescription drugs?