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. “We mustn’t forget that cognition is doing the same.” Teenagers take more risks, because they don’t foresee the consequences adults do, she says.
Several bodies,…
