CONCEPT OF DEATH FROM CHILDʼS PERSPECTIVE Cover Image

ПОЈАМ СМРТИ ИЗ УГЛА ДЕТЕТА
CONCEPT OF DEATH FROM CHILDʼS PERSPECTIVE

Author(s): Miljana Spasić-Šnele
Subject(s): Individual Psychology, Developmental Psychology
Published by: Универзитет у Нишу
Keywords: understanding of death; children's visual presentations of death; children

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of the study presented in this paper is to examine the way children perciеve death and children's visual presentations of death. The study includes 60 children aged 5, 6 and 7 years old and their parents. The studied groups of children have been equally divided by gender and by age. Data were also collected about the child's experience with death and completeness of their families. The interview about death, for children (Slaughter & Griffiths, 2007) and the children's drawings on the theme of “death” were used in the process of collecting the data. The relationships were tested with the ANOVA, T-test and Pearson's correlation coefficient. The results of the research show that the way children perceive death correlates with their age; therefore, the 7-year olds have a more mature understanding of death compared to the 6-year olds and 5-year olds. The analysis of the children’s drawings shows that the children had different visual presentations of death. The children showed mostly lonely dead people, funerals and scenes of murder on their drawings. The research results are partially consistent with the theoretical and empirical assumptions about the way in which children perceive death.

  • Issue Year: XL/2016
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 525-540
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Serbian