Hands-on activities for fourth graders: A tool box for decision-making and reckoning with risk

Abstract

The intention of this work is to exhibit how children can be provided with a kit of elementary tools for judgment under uncertainty, for good decision making and for reckoning with risk. Children, we claim, can acquire this tool kit through a mosaic of simple, play-based activities which are devised to make them aware of the characteristics of uncertainty. We present a sequence of tasks that build upon each other, beginning with the Wason selection task, moving on to probabilistic tasks, tasks in elementary Bayesian reasoning comparing proportions and, finally, to comparing risks. This research is guided and inspired by empirical results on human decision making in the medical and financial domain. © 2009 by GOKKUSAGI.