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1、rstb.royalsocietypublishing.orgReviewCite this article:Longbottom S,Slaughter V.2018 Sources of childrens knowledge aboutdeath and dying.Phil.Trans.R.Soc.B 373:20170267.http:/dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0267Accepted:19 April 2018One contribution of 18 to a theme issueEvolutionary thanatology:impact
2、s of the deadon the living in humans and other animals.Subject Areas:cognition,behaviourKeywords:death concepts,children,development,learning,parental input,mediaAuthor for correspondence:Sarah Longbottome-mail:sarah.longbottomuqconnect.edu.auSources of childrens knowledge aboutdeath and dyingSarah
3、Longbottom1and Virginia Slaughter1,21Early Cognitive Development Centre,School of Psychology,University of Queensland,Brisbane,4072,Australia2Graduate School of Letters,Kyoto University,JapanSL,0000-0003-4808-0962;VS,0000-0001-9315-1497In the last century,decreases in infant and child mortality,urba
4、nization andincreases in healthcare efficacy have reduced childrens personal exposure todeath and dying.So how do children acquire accurate conceptions of deathin this context?In this paper,we discuss three sources of childrens learningabout death and dying,namely,direct experience of death,parental
5、 com-munication about death and portrayals of death in the media and the arts.We conclude with recommendations about how best to teach modernchildren about this aspect of life.This article is part of the theme issue Evolutionary thanatology:impactsof the dead on the living in humans and other animal
6、s.1.IntroductionOver the last hundred years,improvements in public health and modern medi-cine have led to decreased mortality rates,particularly in children and youngadults 1.Prior to the twentieth century,death was most commonly experi-enced at home,following a short illness or as a result of work
7、place accidents2.The highest mortality rates were found in children and infants,but it wasnot uncommon for adults to die while still in the prime of life 1,2.When adeath occurred outside the home,the body was typically held in the homefor traditional rituals(e.g.wakes)before burial or cremation 2,3.
8、Extendedfamilies lived in close proximity,so death was encountered and mourned bya close-knit community that included children.Recentchangestofamilystructuresandcompositions,andgreatergeographi-cal mobility reducing contact with extended family has resulted in a significantdeclineinmourningrituals(f
9、orexample,traditionalIrishwakesathome4),par-ticularly in Western societies 14.This trend is also being increasinglyexperienced in many traditional cultures as a result of increasing globalizationand a shift from traditional rites and ceremonies to more modern social norms(see,for example,Jacob et al
10、.5).As a result,children,and even young adults,have become increasingly isolated from the realities of death in everyday life.Coincidently,therehavebeensignificantchangestoattitudesconcerninghowchildren should be raised 1 and this includes attitudes about exposing childrento death and dying 6,7.Over
11、all there has been a marked shift in Westernsocieties from the stance that death is a natural part of life to an attitude of pro-tecting children from the realities of death 6,7.This attitudewas documented byMiller et al.7 in their interviews with Mid-Western American parents and tea-chers of 3-to 6
12、-year-old children.These adults expressed the views that theirchildren were cognitively and emotionally too immature to comprehend andcope with death,and thus should be actively shielded from its realities.Forresearchersinvestigatingchildrensdeathconcepts,theprotectionisttrendis highly pertinent.It
13、is increasingly difficult to carryout research because ethicalreview boards,education departments,individual teachers and parents oftenreject researchers requests to investigate childrens understanding of death.Yetit is essential to understand where and how modern children learn about deathand dying
14、 both from a basic research perspective and as a basis for educationaland clinical intervention.Here we examine three main sources of informationabout death and dying that children access:direct exposure to death,parental&2018 The Author(s)Published by the Royal Society.All rights munication about d
15、eath and depictions of death anddying in the media.We conclude with suggestions for furtherresearch and recommendations for how best to teach modernchildren about death and dying.2.Assessing childrens understanding of deathDeath is a complex concept to grasp as it has interweavingbiological,socio-cu
16、ltural,spiritual and emotional elements.To assess childrens understanding of death,researchers typi-cally adopt a cognitive perspective focusing on childrensrecognition of death as a biological event 812.In this tra-dition,a mature death concept is measured and defined interms of several sub-concept
17、s.While the terminology mayvary from study to study,the most commonly assessedsub-concepts are:(1)Irreversibility/permanence:the understanding that deathis a permanent state from which there is no return to life;(2)Inevitability/universality:the understanding that allliving things must die eventuall
18、y;(3)Applicability:the understanding that only living thingscan die;(4)Cessation:the understanding that all bodily processescease to function upon death;and(5)Causation:the understanding that death is ultimatelycaused by a breakdown of bodily functions 11.Early researchers sometimes classified after
19、life reasoning(e.g.asserting that the dead can think and feel)as evidenceofimmatureirreversibilityorcessationsub-concepts.However,in the last decade,research on the development ofspiritual and/or religious beliefs about the afterlife(e.g.13)has confirmed that spiritual conceptions of death are devel
20、op-mentally distinct from biological 1316 ones.Childrensbiological concepts of death are typically mastered first,andthen spiritual elements are layered on top,leading to anadult pattern of sophisticated understanding of the biologicalreality of death coexisting with belief in an afterlife for themi
21、nd or soul 1316.This may explain why individual differ-ence studies typically have found minimal effects of specificreligious beliefs or levels of religiosity on childrens biologicalunderstanding of death 1719.This review will focus on how children acquire a biologicalunderstanding of death.Research
22、 in this tradition indicatesthat the sub-concepts are acquired in a relatively consistentdevelopmental pattern that follows the numbered list above.Irreversibility is almost always understood first,as early asage3,andcausationisacquiredlast,usuallybyage8.Thisgen-eral pattern is evident even across d
23、iverse cultural groups18,19.Within this broadly normative pattern of acquisition,ecological and individual factors influence the order of acqui-sition for inevitability,applicability and cessation,as well asthe developmental timetable for understanding death as awhole 8,9,11,12,20.Hesitancyaround in
24、vestigating childrensunderstanding of death means that experimental or trainingstudies are almost non-existent.Therefore,most of what weknow about how children learn about death comes from indi-vidual differences studies correlating subject or environmentalvariables with childrens mastery of death s
25、ub-concepts.Themost common variable included in such investigations ischildrens direct experience of death.3.Direct experience of deathIntuitively,the maturityof childrens death concepts shouldbeassociated with their first-hand experience.However,the dataare inconsistent on this.Whereas many studies
26、 report thatexperience with death increases childrens death understand-ing(see Speece&Brent 21 for a review),some report noassociation 10,22 or even a negative association 8.Onereason for the lack of consensus could be varying definitionsof what experience constitutes 23.Experience of death ismeasur
27、ed via child self-report,parent or teacher report,andcan include one or more of:(a)death of an immediate familymember or close friend,(b)death of an extended familymember,acquaintance or family friend,or(c)death of a pet8,9,24,25.Additional variables such as closeness of therelationship,extent of ph
28、ysical exposure to the corpse,involve-ment in funerary rituals etc.are almost never included yetindividual differences in these specific experiences are likelyto be important to childrens understanding.Another reasonfor the mixed findings may be that the association is age-dependent:it appearsthat d
29、irect experience predicts childrensdeathconceptsforchildrenuptotheageof6years26,butnotfor older children.Alternatively,the association between direct experience ofdeath and childrens death concepts may be mediated by par-ental communication.Parents report that an experience ofdeath is one of the mos
30、t significant factors influencing theirdecision to talk to their children about death 24,27.As wediscuss below,parental input appears to be a significantpredictor of childrens understanding.Althoughexposuretodeathand/orcorpsesisarguablythemost powerful source of learning about death 28,there maybe o
31、ther experiences that influence childrens understandingof death indirectly.For example,childrens concepts of deathare developmentally intertwined with their concepts of lifeand the life cycle 20,29,such that learning about one auto-matically promotes development of the other 12.Numerousstudies indic
32、ate that contact with the natural world is posi-tively associated with development of various biologicalconcepts,many of which are conceptually related to deathanddying(foracompletereview,seeLongbottom&Slaughter30).Thus it stands to reason that experience with cycles ofnature and living animals also
33、 plays a role in childrens under-standing of death,although so far no research has beenconducted to test this assumption.4.Parental communication about death anddyingWhat children know and learn is grounded in what theirparents teach them.This includes childrens developing under-standing of biology
34、and the natural world 31,with numerousstudies demonstratingtheinfluenceofparentalcommunicationon concepts such as natural life cycle changes and metamor-phoses 32,genetic inheritance 33 and humananimalcategorization 34,35.Clinical psychologists and bereavement experts emphasizetheimportanceoftalking
35、tochildrenaboutdeathfromanearlyageinanhonestandinformativeway,andtoportraydeathasanatural part of the life cycle(e.g.3638).These same sourcesexpress concern that many parents do not discuss death indepth with their children until the issue is forced by therstb.royalsocietypublishing.orgPhil.Trans.R.
36、Soc.B 373:201702672death of a close relative,friend or pet 8,10,34,35.A survey of270 American parents of 46-year-old children revealed thatparents were least comfortable talking with their childrenabout death,when compared with talking about other biologi-cal topics including reproduction,life proce
37、sses,ageing andillness 39.Although it should be noted that these parentsaverage response for discussing death fell between comforta-ble and somewhat comfortable.Another issue is thatparents communications about death can be misleading;theuseof euphemisms(shes passedonor we lost her)canactu-allybedet
38、rimentaltoyoungchildrensunderstanding,becausethese forms of expression avoid the biological realities of deathand may even imply that the dead can return.Despite widespread consensus that parental communi-cation is an important factor in childrens development of amature death concept,few studies to
39、date have directly exam-ined the links.One exception is Matalon 26,who examinedcommunication about death in 68 middle-to upper-middleclass parents from New York City with their 6-to 9-year-oldchildren.Based on the recommendations of death educationspecialists,she devised a questionnaire to assess pa
40、rents ten-dency to engage in effective communication about death.Matalons definition of effective communication included:theparents willingness,availability and comfort when answer-ing their childrens questions about death and dying,theirability to share the unpleasant feelings and uncertaintiesabou
41、t death and their awareness of the need to prepare thechild for the inevitable reality by using opportunities innature.Matalon 26 found that parents self-reported fre-quency of this type of communication was significantlycorrelated with their childrens sophisticated understandingof death.The study a
42、lso revealed a significant negative associ-ation between parents own death anxiety and their tendencyto communicate effectively about death,suggesting thatparents who were more death-anxious were more avoidantor more likely to resort to euphemisms 26.It should benoted,however,that parents questionna
43、ire responses abouthow they talk to their children about death may not accuratelyrepresent what they say when the topic comes up.Hunter&Smith 9 found no significant correlation between childrensdeath concepts and their parents communication aboutdeath,when the latter was assessed by having parents w
44、ritedirect responses to a 5-year-old actors audio-taped questionsabout death.This methodological difference could accountfor the contrasting findings,or,as the authors acknowledged,it may be that Hunter&Smiths 9 null findings could beattributed to their relatively small sample(N 37)andrestricted ran
45、ge of scores.Ultimately,the role of parentalinput about death should be explored with methodologiesthat capture what parents actually say to their children.Explorations of parents communication about death anddying highlight two factors that influence death conceptdevelopment in Western populations.
46、These are:(1)the ageat which children are believed to be capable of understandingdeath,and therefore should be taught,and(2)the type ofinformation parents provide their children.Given that whatparents discuss with their children is influenced by the ageof the child,this factor will be discussed firs
47、t.Early researchers examining the development of death con-cepts argued that children were incapable of understanding oreven thinking about death before the age of 7,and that amature death concept was not fully developed until 10 yearsof age 25,40.These estimates were informed by Piagetiancognitive
48、developmental theory,which assumed that childrencouldnotthinkaboutabstractconceptsuntilmiddlechildhood.As noted above,the modern approach assesses childrensunderstanding of death as a biological,as opposed to abstract,concept.This shift has significantly revised the developmentaltimeline,with modern
49、 research indicating that most childrenacquire a complete death concept between 5 and 7 years ofage,andmanyarecapableofunderstandingsomesub-conceptsof death as young as age 3 1012,35.Despite this updatedapproach and research findings,much of the popular press,aswell as some researchers,continue to c
50、ite outdated researchand adhere to Piagets initial developmental ages.This mayaccount for the variation in parents observed beliefs abouttheir childrens capacity to understand death.Research with Western educated parents indicates that themajority tend to fall into two groups with respect to theirbe