Behaving Strategically: Adolescent Development of Efficient, Complex, and Socially Focused Behavior

Strategic decision-making—the coordination of choices and actions in service of goals—refines into adulthood as the goals that guide behavior shift during adolescence to support the transition to independent life. This review highlights two trajectories of development that shape behavioral strategy use across adolescence. On the one hand, efficiency-oriented and complex information processing increases during adolescence and facilitates strategic behavior. On the other hand, a highly salient adolescent drive to learn about the social world and one's place in it fosters behavioral strategies that reflect a temporary orientation toward obtaining social information and accommodating peers. In addition to synthesizing behavioral and neuroscientific evidence of behavioral strategy development, this review highlights cognitive and neural mechanisms that underpin changing goals and strategies through adolescence. It calls for further research on the difference between strategy knowledge and use and encourages work that demarcates the behavioral strategies shaping adolescent behavior.