Developmental change in construing responsibility for road incidents involving a child pedestrian.

The study reported here is part of a larger project examining how children's perception of the road environment and the responsibilities of the pedestrian develop between the ages of five and fifteen years/adulthood. The aim of this particular study was to characterise how subjects of different ages interpret a series of roadside incidents, and how they allocate blame for these incidents. Analysis of responses across a range of incidents provided the basis for a reconstruction of the criteria used in interpreting events at different ages. This reconstruction provides the basis for a theoretical model of developmental change in perception of pedestrian responsibilities. (A)