THE DEVELOPMENT OF RISK-TAKING IN CHILDREN

Since clear relationships exist between age, gender, and the occurrenc e of different kinds of accident, safety researchers and educators nee d to take account of recent work in developmental and environmental ps ychology, which is leading to a revised view of children's environment al competence. Studies of the development of risk perception and risk- taking are first reviewed: these have identified three broad phases th rough which children proceed, culminating in an understanding of the i nteraction between their own perspective, that of other participants, and characteristics of the situation itself in the causation of accide nts. This broad picture is in line with the reformulations of Piagetia n stage theory which have occurred in recent years: rather than being ''pre-operational'' or ''egocentric'' in a global sense, young childre n's main limitations seem to be in applying the principles of routines or drills from one setting to another, and studies of attention and m emory show that the amount of information children are able to process improves with age, as does their resistance to distraction. Three asp ects of individual differences seem to have an influence upon risk-tak ing, namely gender, reflection-impulsivity and family structure, and t he findings are reviewed in each case. As children get older they expe rience an increasingly wide variety of unfamiliar situations, and it i s essential to understand the interaction between these age changes in environmental circumstances and mechanisms of developmental change in formulating programmes for safety education.