Research on Children’s Conception of Death | Methodology

Research on Childrens Conception of D wipe outh MethodologyThis study number is to find out the taking into custody of final stage of children from different stages, and the difference between their concepts. Death is part of our life and also an accomplishment of it that no one post avoid. Numerous studies kick in been conducted to determine different ages of childrens concept towards death in these 80 years, and the first one was conducted by Schilder and Wechsler in 1934 (Speece, 1995). According to Speece, thither is a positive relationship between age and childrens concept of death.Maria Nagy (1948) conducted a classic essay on this topic and inferred that in that respect be three stages that ar closely cogitate for children of understanding death.First stage (3 to 5 years old) Younger children cannot understand the outcome and irreversibility of death. Children understand that they need to eat and breathe in order to live, so they cannot imagine a person without thes e activities. Most of them regard death as the person who is sleeping or it is vertical a temporary state and starts to have the recognition that death is different from life.Second stage (5 to 8 years old) Children have not understood that death is unavertible, cancel and universal. During this period, they realize that death is the final outcome of human, and they animadvert it is unpredictable and mysterious. Children tend to believe that life is taken away by external force, which they think it is the same force that gives us life, therefore it is reasonable that it could be taken away, and then we die.Third stage (above 9 years old) Children have mature understanding of death. They realize that death is not well-nighthing that can be interfered by external forces (except accident), and could not be controlled by humans entrust. Death is a natural process that will happen on every individual, including themselves.On the other hand, death is not a single concept, it has four components universality, irreversibility, non-functionality and causality (Speece, 1995). In this study, we are going to examine childrens concept about universality and irreversibility of death.Definitions of Key ComponentsUniversality refers to the understanding that all living things will die.Irreversibility refers to the understanding that once a living thing dies, the physical body cannot alive (Speece Sandor B, 1984).MethodParticipantsA total of 30 4-year-olds, 30 7-year-olds and 30 10-year-olds children are chosen to attend this experiment. all participants are right-handed, have normal eye-sight, hearing and their intelligence are at average level. They should not do similar experiment before. Informed consent was obtained from parents, teachers and related department of participants.Design and ProcedureWe duplicate the method which Zhu LiQi and Fang Fuxi used in Childrens Understanding of Aging. prove 1 Free Association TaskParticipants will be ask to recall anything th at could die, such as animals and plants. This step is to see if participants have the ability to distinguish non-living objects and living things.Guidance There are some objects around us, some of them will die one day, but some of them wont die. Can you give me some examples of them? Very good. Do you have any more examples?Experiment 2 Organization TaskA total of 16 kinds (8 kinds of non-living objects and 8 kinds of living things) of stimuli in the form of real photos will be presented to participants. There are photos of rocks, clouds, rivers, sun, spoons, television, cars, chairs, mushrooms, flowers, trees, grass, birds, fish, dog and human.(We choose stimulus that children are easily seen in daily life.).Procedure All photos will be presented in a randomly mixed order. Participants are required to separate photos into two sets (Those that can die and those cannot). Experimenter will record the reaction of participants and make sure that the 2 sets are correct. This experimen t will repeat twice to reduce random error.Experiment 3 The irreversibility and universality of death.Choose 3 types of photos as stimulus from experiment 2, such as trees, dogs and human. Experimenter will ask two questions 1) Question about irreversibility If X dies, can it/she/he come back to life or it/she/he will be dead forever? 2) Question about universality Does X has to die, or X can live forever? (X refers to stimulus)ResultsExperiment 1The responses from participants can group into three categories.Not distinguishable Participants reply not knowing the receptions, having non-living objects in death example or vice versa and some will give conflict answer such as, the object will die and not die in different examples.Partly distinguishable Participants answers are partially correct, they answer animals and plants, animals and human or only one of them will die and they know non-living things is not a biotic example.Fully Distinguishable Participants answer that human, ani mals and plants will die and non-living objects will not die.Table 1From my expected result, 4 years old children can hardly distinguish and this phenomenon will slump when the age of children increased.Experiment 2In this experiment, participants will only get 1 point if they get the correct answer twice, otherwise 0 point. and so there are four categories animals, plants, natural objects and artifacts. The total score for each category is 4 points.Table 2We will use SPSS 3 x 4 Anova to examine the scores. We predict that there is a main effect for Age and Stimulus and interaction between them. Follow-up test is required if results are significant. The older the children, the more accurate they determine in each category. (Li-qi Fu-xi, 2006)Experiment 3Participants will get 1 point for each question. Therefore, there will be 3 points for irreversibility and 3 points for universality.Table 3We will use SPSS 3 x 2 Anova to examine the scores. We predict that most(prenominal) of t he 4-years old and 7-years old children could not understand the concept of irreversibility and universality of death. It is because they thought that death is just a temporary state and they thought that death is avoidable if you are lucky enough (Nagy, 1948). 10-years old children have mature understanding of these two key components of death.ReferencesLi-qi, Z., Fu-xi, F. (2006). Perschool Childrens Understanding of Death. Chinese Journal of Clnical Psychology, 91-93.Nagy, M. (1948). The Childs Theories concerning Death. The Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of communicable Psychology, 3-27.Speece, M. W. (1995). Michigan Family Review. 57-69. Retrieved from Childrens Concepts of Death.Speece, M. W., Sandor B, B. (1984). Childrens Understanding of death A review of Three Components of a Death Concept. Child Development, 1671-1686.