Children's Conceptions of Death
Author(s): Edward White, Bill Elsom and Richard Prawat
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Child Development, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 307-310
Published by: Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development
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Children's Conceptions of Death
Edward White
OklahomaCity Public Schools
Bill Elsom and Richard Prawat
Oklahoma State University
WHITE, EDWARD; ELSOM,BILL; and PRAWAT, RICHARD. Children's
of Death.CHILD
Conceptions
1978, 49, 307-310. This study investigated children's conceptions of death
from a developmentalperspective. Kindergartenthrough fourth graders (N = 170) were tested
for conservation and then interviewed following the presentation of a story about an elderly
woman's death, in an attempt to assess children's understanding of 3 concepts: irrevocability,
cessation of bodily processes, and universality. 2 story versions were used, 1 depicting the
woman as a nice person, the other as an unkind person. In the majorfinding, understandingof
universality, but not understanding of the irrevocabilityof death and cessation of bodily processes, was significantly related to the child's level of cognitive development. The variable
relating to the attractiveness of the story character significantly affected children's responses
regarding cause of death.
DEVELOPMENT,
Thirty years ago, Nagy (1948) commented
on the fact that little attention had been directed toward one important phase of the
child's life-the child's conception of death.
Since then, little additional research has been
done on this subject. However, two studies
are worth mentioning. One, done by Melear
(1973), found a gradual, age-related increase
in children's understanding of two
concepts related to death-the irrevocability of death, and
the fact that it involves a cessation of
bodily
functions. A second study (Childers & Wimmer 1971), which assessed children's cognitive
awareness of the universality and irrevocability of death, also obtained a gradual increase
with age in children's understanding of irrevocability; however, a dramatic increase was
observed between the ages of 6 and 7 in the
child's understanding of death's
universality,
the fact that death happens to everyone. Such
an abrupt increase in understanding
might be
attributable to a developmental transformation
in the thought process.
According to Vygotsky (1962), certain
concepts develop spontaneously, through the
child's own mental effort, while others are
acquired through tuition. Kohlberg makes use
of this distinction in observing that
concepts
of life, death, and birth
develop naturally
through Piaget-type stages, "regardless of preschool 'scientific' informational
input" (1968,
p. 1035). On the basis of Childers and Wim[Child Development, 1978, 49, 307-310.
0009-3920/78/4902-0004$00.751
@
mer's study and on the basis of Piagetian theory, one might expect the universality concept
to be closely tied to cognitive development.
In an area which has been successfully related
to cognitive development, that of moral judgment, Piaget (1948) notes an important change
in children's views with the advent of concreteoperational thought. Children begin to apply
the same rules in games to all players; that is,
there is a universality of rules. Comparably,
it might be hypothesized that children at the
concrete-operational stage of development will
understand that death must come to all people.
They may be a little fuzzy concerning the
details (i.e., irrevocability and cessation of
bodily functions), but they should realize that
whatever happens happens to everyone alike.
This hypothesis was tested in the present study.
Specifically, children who utilize concrete
modes of thought (i.e., conservers) were expected to demonstrate a greater frequency of
understanding of universality than children
who utilize preoperational modes of thought
(i.e., nonconservers). It was thought that understanding of the other two concepts related
to death would increase with age, but not
in such a way as to indicate that understanding of these concepts is tied to concrete-operational structures.
A word about methodology: One problem
with previous research is that abstract, openended questions were used to assess the child's
1978 by the Sqoiety for Research in Child Development,
Inc.
308
Child Development
understandingof death (i.e., "Does everybody
die?"). It may be that a more accurate estimate of children'sviews regarding death tan
be attained by using a less abstract format.
Thus, in this study, a story about an elderly
woman's death was read to children prior to
the interview, and questions which dealt specifically with the woman's death were used to
obtain responses. Use of concrete stories also
enabled the experimenters to manipulate a
variable which may be of importanceto subjects when asked to comment about a person's
death-the attractiveness of the individual's
personality (i.e., kindness or unkindness toward others). Previous research has shown
that personal attributesof story characterscan
affect children's moral judgments (Damon
1975).
Method
Subjects.-Subjects were 170 children
ranging in age at each grade level as follows:
kindergarten,5-3 to 6-9; first, 6-4 to 7-8; second, 7-3 to 8-3; third, 8-5 to 10-3; fourth, 9-4
to 10-8. The sample consisted of 40 subjects
randomly selected from kindergartenand 40
from first grade, with 30 each from second,
third, and fourth grade. Subjects were drawn
from three public schools in a suburbancommunityof 33,000 in upper-,lower-, and middleclass areas. Only subjects receiving parental
permission were used; thus, the sample included a higher percentage of females than
males (56%vs. 44%). This sex ratio was taken
into account in randomly assigning subjects to
story conditions (see below).
Instruments and procedures.-Individual
interviews were conducted with each of the
170 subjects. The students were first presented
with three conservation tasks dealing with
conservationof substance,of continuousquantity, and of discontinuousquantity. The tasks
were taken from the concept assessment kit
devised by Goldschmid and Bentler (1968).
The child was labeled a conserverif both response and justificationof response were correct for at least two of the three tasks.
Following presentation of the conservation tasks, the child was sent to another part
of the testing room to continue the interview
with a second experimenter.A very short illustrated story was read to each child. Illustrations for the story were selected from a children'sbook entitled Maxie (Kantrowitz1970).
In the story, an elderly woman, Mrs. Wilson,
dies. In one version Mrs. Wilson is a nice and
likable person. She evidences kindness toward
her pets, a bird and a kitten;she enjoys reading
the funnies in the newspaper;and she always
says "hello" to all the children. In the other
version, Mrs. Wilson is an unkind and unlikable person. She is mean to her pets, never
laughs, and yells at children. Each version of
the story was read to half of the students
in each grade. The same illustrationswere used
for both versions. Following the story presentation, general questions were used to elicit
responses-for example, "Do you think that
everybody will die someday?"The format for
follow-up questions was planned in advance.
Thus, if the child responded"yes"to the above
question, he was asked for an explanation;if
the child answered"no,"he was asked to name
some people who will not die and some who
will die. A child was said to understand the
concepts being assessed only if a correct judgment and a logical justificationwere provided
(Strauss 1974-1975). Accordingly,scoring criteria were establishedprior to testing for each
response.Two judges independentlyrated each
subject's response, which was tape-recorded
and transcribed, comparing the subject's answer to a list of acceptable responsesfor each
concept. The two judges were in agreement
90% of the time as to the adequacy of the
children'sjustificationresponses.
Results
Subjectswere groupedtwo ways, by grade
(i.e., age) and by level of cognitive development. Contingency tables were prepared and
the data were tested using x2 analysis in order
to determinethe relationbetween each of these
factors and an understandingof the concepts
of death describedearlier.
Table 1 presents data showing the perTABLE 1
PERCENTAGE
OF STUDENTS WHO HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING OF IRREVOCABILITY OF DEATH, CESSATION
OF CORPOREAL LIFE AT DEATH, AND UNIVERSALITY
OF DEATH
Grade
K. .......
1........
2 ........
3 ........
4 ........
Irrevocability
Corporeal
Life
Universality
17.50
22.50
30.00
40.00
40.00
15.00
32.50
20.00
36.67
43.33
35.00
37.50
66.67
60.00
73.33
White, Elsom, and Prawat 309
centage of subjects at each grade level which
understood each concept. Two concepts, the
irrevocability of death and cessation of corporeal life at death, were understood by less
than half the subjectsat the fourth-gradelevel.
Universality was easier to grasp, with nearly
three-fourthsof the fourth graders exhibiting
an understandingof this concept. Chi-square
analysesrevealed that children'sunderstanding
of irrevocability, x2(4) = 6.00, p > .05, and
of cessation, x2(4) = 9.11, p > .05, was independent of the child's grade level. However,
a significant relationship between an understanding of the universalityof death and grade
level, x2(4)=- 15.52, p < .01, was found to
exist.
As table 1 reveals, a sizable increase in
the percentage of subjects understandinguniversality occurredbetween the first and second
grade (from 38%to 67%). This supports our
hypothesis. An abrupt shift of this type in the
child's ability to comprehend an important
concept is thought by Piaget to reflect structural transformations in the child's mental
process. Although it is impossible in our study
to separate age and cognitive-developmental
factors because of the correlationbetween the
two, a comparison of responses to questions
about the universalityof death made by conservers and nonconservers does support the
contention that a cognitive-developmental
frameworkis more useful than age in classifying responses of this type. As table 2 reveals,
nearly equal percentages of conservers and
nonconserversunderstoodthe concepts of irrevocability and of cessation; this was not true
for universality.The differencesbetween children at the two levels of cognitive development are dramaticfor this concept. Thus, 62%
of the conserversdemonstratedan understanding of the universalityconcept, while an equal
percentage of nonconserversfailed to demonstrate any understanding.Comparisonof differences between the two groups on this concept yields a highly significant x2 statistic,
AND NONCONSERVERS
UNDERSTANDING
CESSATION,
Conserver
.
Nonconserver...
Two additional analyses were done. The
first examined possible sex differences in understanding concepts of death. Surprisingly,
more males than females understood the concept of cessation, X2(1) = 5.19, p < .05. The
authors have no handy theoretical interpretation of this finding.
The second analysis was more important.
Two story versions were used so that half the
children were asked to comment about the
death of an unkind woman and half about the
death of a kind woman. In addition to questions relating to concepts discussedabove, each
child was asked the following question concerning the cause of death: "Do you have any
idea why Mrs.Wilson died?"Although x2 analysis failed to detect any relationshipbetween
the type of story presented to children and
their understandingof what happens at death
(i.e., irrevocability, etc.), the story variable
did influence children's views regarding the
cause of death. Twenty-two percent of the
childrenwho heard the story about the unkind
woman attributed her death to some unkind
act she committed. Some children, for example, claimed she died because she yelled at the
schoolchildren and some because she would
never laugh. Of the children who heard the
story about the nice woman, only one subject
out of 85 attributed the woman'sdeath to her
own behavior, claiming, perhaps whimsically,
that she died because she laughed too much.
There was, then, a significantrelationshipbetween a child'sperceptionof the attractiveness
of the story character and a child's understanding of the cause of that character'sdeath,
x2(1) = 18.36, p < .001.
Discussion
TABLE 2
PERCENTAGE OF CONSERVERS
X2(1) = 8.62, p < .005. On the other hand,
an insignificantrelationshipwas found to obtain between level of cognitive development
and an understandingof irrevocability,x2(1)
= 2.64, p > .05, and of cessation, x2(1)-1.61, p > .05.
IRREVOCABILITY,
AND UNIVERSALITY
Irrevocability
Cessation
Universality
33.33
21.79
32.10
23.08
61.73
38.46
In this study, an attempt was made to
examine the development of three important
concepts relating to death: the irrevocability
of death, the universality of death, and the
fact that bodily functions cease with death.
As hypothesized, the experimentersfound that
an increase in the child's understanding of
death's universality was attributable to cognitive development. Moreover, as predicted,
310
Child Development
comprehensionof the other two concepts did
not relate to cognitive development. These results can perhaps best be interpreted in light
of Vygotsky's (1962) distinction between
"spontaneous"and "scientific"concepts. According to Vygotsky, the former are based on
everyday experience, while the latter are acquired throughtuition. Piaget's (1948) research
on the development of moral judgment provides evidence to support the contention that
universality is a spontaneous concept. He has
found a relationship between concrete-operational thinkingin children and their belief that
rules are absolute and universal,a belief which
resembles the concept examined in this study
relating to the universalityof death. Just as the
formerdevelops naturallyas a function of cognitive growth, so might the latter.
Finally, one result obtained in this study
is troubling. This is the child's willingness to
view death as a form of punishmentfor wrongdoing. Thus, 22%of the subjects felt that the
unkind woman's death was caused by her bad
behavior. Adults may need to assure children
forced to deal with death that death results
from physical and not "psychological"causes.
References
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in early childhood. Child Development, 1971,
42, 1299-1301.
Damon,W. Early conceptions of positive justice as
related to the development of logical operations. Child Development, 1975, 46, 301-312.
Goldschmid, M. L., & Bentler, P. M. Dimensions
and measurement of conservation. Child Development, 1968, 39, 787-802.
Kantrowitz, M. Maxie. New York: Parents Magazine, 1970.
Kohlberg, L. Early education: a cognitive-developmental view. Child Development, 1968, 39,
1013-1062.
Melear, J. D. Children'sconceptionsof death. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1973, 123, 359360.
Nagy, M. The child's theoriesconcerningdeath.
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