Children’s risk taking in a gambling task and injury-risk situation: Evidence for domain specificity in risk decisions

This study explored whether elementary-school children show consistency in risk taking across two tasks that tap different domains, a balance beam task and an Iowa gambling task. Children 7–12 years of age completed these tasks, along with a measure of sensation seeking. Exploring relations across measures revealed independence in children’s performance on each task, suggesting domain specificity in children’s risk taking decision making. Sensation seeking scores positively correlated with physical risk taking on the beam task but did not relate to risk taking on the gambling task. The pattern of these results suggests that children’s risk taking is domain specific, with sensation seeking relating to some aspects of risk taking but not others. Implications for future research are discussed.