Learning to make good decisions: A self-regulation perspective

Two studies were conducted to determine the extent to which feedback could improve the decision-making of adolescents and adults. In Experiment 1, 96 eighth graders and adults engaged in a task that required a choice between easy and hard questions. Two types of feedback (i.e., verbal and outcome) w ere used to help participants identify the type of question that would be m ost likely to earn them points. Results showed that (1) neither group benef ited from verbal feedback, and (2) adults benefited more from outcome feedb ack than eighth graders. In Experiment 2, two types of feedback were once a gain employed in the context of a medical decision-making task. Fifty-five adults and adolescents participated. As was found in Experiment 1, adults s eemed to benefit more from feedback than adolescents. In addition, intellig ence was unrelated to performance. The results are interpreted within the p erspective of a self-regulation model of decision-making.