In what passes for pop neuroscience these days, it has become in vogue to claim that while cold cognition fully matures by around age 16 or so, hot cognition takes much longer, often well into the mid to late 20s. A major proponent of this theory is Laurence Steinberg, who has written extensively on the topic. One major study by Steinberg et al. can be found here, which compares various ages in various countries on several hot and cold cognitive tests. (What the authors call "psychosocial maturity" is a synonym for "hot cognition".) And while such a pattern was apparently seen to some extent in the aggregate, when you break it down by country, the pattern breaks down as well. And the weak results cannot be explained away by individualism vs collectivism, rich vs poor, Global North vs Global South, eastern vs western, or any other obvious societal characteristics. And notably, the USA was an outlier where instead of hot cognition improving steadily and largely linearly to (and likely beyond) age 30 like most other countries, it began to level off in the early to mid 20s and plateaued from then onwards. And one of the other countries actually saw a regress (oops!) in hot cognition in the mid to late 20s. Cold cognition, on the other hand, was generally much more consistent by country, and nearly always leveled off around 16.
It's almost like hot cognition is actually a skill where "practice makes good enough", as opposed to "biology is destiny". There is far too wide a variation between individuals and societies to seriously argue otherwise. And even a quick and cursory observation will reveal that most older adults aren't really all that great at it in the real world. All the more reason to call BS on any claim that young people's civil rights be curtailed in the name of specious junk neuroscience.
As for the tempting idea that the juvenile injustice system (or a third category) thus be expanded to include young adults (ages 18-25 or so), or otherwise going easier on young adults, please allow me to channel the late criminologist James Q. Wilson. He noted that even if disadvantaged demographics have a "steeper hill to climb" in terms of staying out of trouble, the prospect of punishment actually has greater utility for them to make it easier for them to climb that proverbial hill. To that I would add, of course, as long as they are not completely incompetent, and it is in the interest of justice to do so. And treating young adults as non-adults for that purpose is ultimately a trap, a velvet glove to the iron fist of revoking their hard-won civil rights as well.
That said, it is certainly the very height of hypocrisy to try and punish young people of any age as adults when they commit "status offenses" based entirely on age like underage drinking or smoking, curfew violations, and stuff like that which would not be crimes when adults do these things. All such "status offenses" thus need to be either decriminalized or removed from the law books entirely, just like victimless crimes (or what the late, great Peter McWilliams called "consensual crimes") more generally. Ageists really cannot have it both ways!
And finally, people of ALL ages really need to use their cold cognition to plan ahead better, to avoid the pitfalls of relying solely on hot cognition in potentially dangerous situations. We ignore that at our peril.
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