Later gambling behaviors attributable to traits in childhood?

CNN story-- "Is your child a gambler?"

It may be possible to tell if a kindergartner will become an adult gambler. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports.

The story refers to research published in this month's Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.

Science Daily summarized the study on its website:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2009) — Children whose teachers rated them as more impulsive in kindergarten appear more likely to begin gambling behaviors by the sixth grade, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals....

"Our results suggest that behavioral features such as inattentiveness, distractibility and hyperactivity at school entry represent a vulnerability factor for precocious risk-oriented behavior like gambling in sixth grade," the authors write. "It is very plausible that these childhood characteristics snowball into cumulative risks for youngsters who do not eventually outgrow the distractibility and inattentiveness from early childhood and become involved in gambling as a typical pastime for many youth. Most importantly, our observations suggest a developmentally continuous effect of impulsivity that places individuals on a life course trajectory toward gambling involvement in adolescence and emerging adulthood."

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