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Children's injuries are a serious public-health problem, but they could be substantially reduced by proper prevention. According to the literature the best predictor of injuriesis the physical risk taking. In this study we examined preschoolers' and mothers' perceptions of children's physical risk taking. Participants included 203 children (M age = 60 months), their mothers and their teachers. We first compared children's and mothers' answers about desired and allowed level of risk in some play situations,and then we verified if children's and mothers' ideas equally predicted the risk for injuries at school. The teachers completed the Injury Behavior Checklist. Findings showed that children's desired risk taking was higher than their mothers believe. We also found that children at school, in absence of their parents but under the supervision of another adult, behaved according to their own wishes. Our findings suggest that mothers are not always reliable informants about the risk taking behavior of their young children while they are at school. Children's desires are a good predictor of their actual behavior, and for this reason interventions aiming at the reduction of injuries should be directed not only toward parents and teachers but also to the children themselves.

Contains fulltext : 90154.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Research has shown that male risk taking is enhanced by the presence of observers. However, naturalistic observations and laboratory experiments have provided mixed evidence as to whether male physical risk taking is primarily directed at females, at other males, or both. We present a behavioral experiment in virtual reality in which males ( N = 72) crossed an ominous bridge over a steep valley — either in the presence of a male virtual observer, a female virtual observer, or alone. A male or female experimenter was present while the participants crossed the bridge. Our results show that males crossed the bridge faster in the presence of a female experimenter than in the presence of a male experimenter. Follow up tests revealed that the experimenter effect was driven by the condition in which the virtual observer was female. This finding is consistent with previous work suggesting that male physical risk taking is primarily directed at females. 12 p.

In Canada, unintentional injury is the leading cause of death beyond age one, and a leading cause of hospitalization for children. For school-age children, injuries often occur when children are unsupervised and with peers. The present study addresses how personality attributes interact with relational context to predict peer influences on risk taking decisions at these ages. Participants engaged in a physical risk taking task (i.e., balance beam) before and after a peer influence manipulation (i.e., peer engaged in greater risk-taking than the target child). Results revealed that children high on the personality attribute 'need for approval' were more easily influenced toward risk taking but only when indices of friendship quality were high. Additionally, threat appraisals (severity and vulnerability) showed reductions, from pre- to post-influence, that were predictive of peer influenced risk taking decisions. The results suggest the importance of examining childhood risk-taking within both relational and social-situational contexts.