Journal of Pediatric Psychology () pp. –435, doi:./jpepsy/jsi Advance Access publication February , Journal of Pediatric Psychology vol. no. © Society of Pediatric Psychology ; all rights reserved. Predictors of Children’s and Adolescents ’ Risk Per

cognitive hypotheses about the psychological mechanisms underlying children’s risk percep-tion. Method Youth (N = 1315) ranging from 9 to 17 years of age completed measures assessing adolescent egocentrism, personal experience with four negative health events, how much they worried about the health events, and their perceived skill for event-related activities. The measures were completed twice, 12 months apart. Results Lacking personal experi-ence with and worrying less about health threats were significant predictors of more optimisti-cally biased risk perception a year later. Conclusions The lack of experience with and not worrying about serious health consequences may desensitize children to potential health risks. Clinical applications for health education programs are discussed. Key words risk perception; children; adolescents; unrealistic optimism; health beliefs. Many health education programs are predicated on the cognitive theory that health beliefs guide health behav-iors. As outlined in the often-cited health belief model (HBM; Janz & Becker, 1984), people are more likely to engage in health behaviors if they perceive (a) vulner-ability to health threats, (b) that the consequences of the threat are severe, and (c) that treatment or taking preventive measures will be effective. Subsequent modi-fications to this model include the addition of perceived social or monetary barriers to the adaptive response. A cue to action which can be internal (e.g., symptoms) or external (e.g., health communication) is hypothesized to trigger these cognitive processes. However, demographic and sociopsychological variables may influence percep-tions and thereby indirectly affect the likelihood of the response. Although there are variants to this framework, the different models proposed share many of the sam