The authors investigated risk taking and underlying information use in 13-to 16-and 17-to 19-year-old adolescents and in adults in 4 experiments, using a novel dynamic risk-taking task, the Columbia Card Task (CCT). The authors investigated risk taking under differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes with 2 versions of the CCT, constituting the most direct test of a dual-system explanation of adolescent risk taking in the literature so far. The "hot" CCT was designed to trigger more affective decision making, whereas the "cold" CCT was designed to trigger more deliberative decision making. Differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes in the 2 CCT versions was established by self-reports and assessment of electrodermal activity. Increased adolescent risk taking, coupled with simplified information use, was found in the hot but not the cold condition. Need-forarousal predicted risk taking only in the hot condition, whereas executive functions predicted information use in the cold condition. Results are consistent with recent dual-system explanations of risk taking as the result of competition between affective processes and deliberative cognitive-control processes, with adolescents' affective system tending to override the deliberative system in states of heightened emotional arousal.Keywords: risk taking, adolescence, affective and deliberative decision making, dual system, cognitive control Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0014983.supp Everyday risk taking shows a typical developmental trajectory. Comparatively low during childhood, risk taking increases when individuals reach puberty, peaks in adolescence and early adulthood, and decreases again during adulthood. This age pattern has been documented in different risk-taking behaviors, such as the use of licit and illicit substances, dangerous behavior in traffic, unsafe sexual practices, delinquent behaviors, and risky recreational sports

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In a mental rotation task, children 5 and 6 years of age and adults had to decide as quickly as possible if a photograph of a hand showed a left or a right limb. The visually presented hands were left and right hands in palm or in back view, presented in four different angles of rotation. Participants had to give their responses with their own hands either in a regular, palms-down posture or in an inverted, palms-up posture. For both children and adults, variation of the posture of their own hand had a significant effect. Reaction times were longer the more awkward it was to bring their own hand into the position shown in the stimulus photograph. These results, together with other converging evidence, strongly suggest that young children's kinetic imagery is guided by motor processes, even more so than adults'.

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This article contrasts intuitive knowledge about projectile motion expressed in action with knowledge expressed in explicit judgments. In the action condition of Experiment 1 children and adults threw a ball horizontally from different heights to hit targets on the floor; in the judgment condition the same subjects rated the respective launch speeds required. All age groups appropriately varied the launch speed with respect to both height of release and target distance in the action condition. In the judgment condition, however, kindergartners failed to integrate the relevant dimensions and even fourth graders and adults showed misconceptions of the speed-height relation. Experiment 2 established that the speed gradations in the action condition did not critically depend on visual flight feedback or the availability of outcome information. We conclude that perceptual-motor knowledge about projectile motion is distinct from naive, verbal-cognitive concepts of projectile motion and follows different developmental courses.