Teenagers fail to see the consequences

[Dover]

Teenagers fail to see the consequences


10:00 04 December 04

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Juveniles may find it harder than adults to foresee the consequences of their actions. The finding may explain why teenagers act compulsively and take more risks. It has been seized on by campaigners who want to ban the death penalty for under-18s in the US.

We know teenagers can be a bit gawky while they are still learning to coordinate their bodies, says Abigail Baird, a cognitive scientist from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, US. “We mustn’t forget that cognition is doing the same.” Teenagers take more risks, because they do not foresee the consequences as adults do, she says.

Several bodies, including the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, have submitted evidence in a test case before the US Supreme Court arguing against the death penalty for juveniles, and including some of Baird’s ideas. While 31 states ban the execution of juvenile offenders, 23 under-18s have been executed to date, more than half of them in Texas.

The test case concerns Christopher Simmons, who was sentenced to death for a murder he committed when he was 17. In August 2003, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned his sentence on the grounds that it violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In July 2004, Simmons’s lawyers asked the US Supreme Court to uphold the lower court’s decision...cont'd

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996738

[Gyre]

1. Nice restatement of the obvious

Pffffft!

[Bucky]

2. C'mon, if young people didn't ignore obvious dangers there'd be no wars

Can't have peace breaking out, can we?