Toward a new conception of habit and self-control in adolescent maturation

Abstract

Neuropsychology shows us that adolescent maturation involves three areas: ejective functions, personal identity, and socialization and this maturation is not reached without emotion regulation. If we look at what this emotion regulation is made up of, psychology will tell us motivation, stress, resilience, emotional cognition, self-control, and habits are fields in which emotion regulation is useful. All of them are looking at the same thing but from different points of view. We can consider forming good habits as the outcome of reached emotional regulation by continued effort of self-control. Currently, neuroscience has seen habit like motor routine and for that reason links habits with corticostriatal pathways, but this is a narrow view of habit. In this opinion article we propose others cerebral process that fit better with a more general conception of the habit. This is developed during adolescence through emotion regulation, so education could be crucial to reach healthy or unhealthy habit.