A new study suggests that short-term sleep deprivation and caffeine intake have minimal effects on teenage decision-making, highlighting the complexity of adolescent risk behaviours.
Adolescence is a period when decision-making systems are still maturing, with earlier research linking the age group’s heightened risk-taking to ongoing development in the prefrontal cortex and to a mismatch between reward-seeking and cognitive control networks. Against that backdrop, a new study in Frontiers in Psychology tested whether a short period of sleep loss, acute caffeine intake or both would shift how teenagers weigh risk and reward. The answer, at least on the task used here, was largely no.
The study involved 41 adolescents aged 14 to 17 who first completed a two-night sleep manipulation. One group was restricted to 6 hours in bed, while the other was allowed 9.5 hours. Participants then took part in a double-blind, placebo-controlled caffeine test and completed a modified Wheel of Fortune task, a measure designed to separate risk-taking tendency from more rational and more clearly irrational choices.
Using Bayesian analysis, the researchers found that the estimated effects of sleep condition, caffeine and their interaction were all small. The 95% highest density intervals crossed zero for each outcome, and the overlap with the region of practical equivalence suggested little evidence for effects that were meaningfully large in day-to-day terms. In plain language, the study did not find convincing average changes in risk-taking propensity, optimal choices or irrational choices after the sleep or caffeine manipulations.
The authors said the findings may say as much about the task as about the interventions. Their results suggest the modified Wheel of Fortune may have had limited sensitivity to the experimental conditions under the protocol used. Even so, the study offers useful effect-size estimates and uncertainty ranges for future work on how sleep and caffeine might shape adolescent decision-making, a field that remains important given the developmental pressures already acting on teenage brains.
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