Lecture notes, lectures 4 - dr. alba agostino PDF

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Dr. Alba Agostino...

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Monday, February 9th , 2015 Chapter 6 Death And The Child Children’s Early Understandings of Death:  Oftentimes, euphemisms are offered to children to help them understand what death is  i.e., “Grandpa’s gone to a better place”  Adults sometimes believe that young children have no awareness of loss and death  Young children perceive/understand many events before they can fully understand/explain them to themselves or others (Corr, 2010)  Begins from small inklings and then gradually (via experience and exposure), the picture of what it truly is expands and develops  Parents and adults sometimes only realize in retrospect that children really did understand more about the death than they had previously thought o Having more awareness of where the child is at in this mental process, enables adults/parents to better handle the concept of death  According to Corr (2010) twofold danger in failing to appreciate children’s early understandings of death: 1. Blinds adults to what is actually going on o Parents and others often realize only in retrospect that children had been aware/perceived important events in their lives o With more awareness, parents/adults appreciate children’s interest/confusion. Better able to engage in more effective communication 2. Problems for adults and is self-serving o What will cause an awareness of loss and death? o Self-serving because it gets us off the hook from having to explain loss and death to a child (or teach coping strategies to deal with loss) o Does this awareness magically appear at a certain age? o Parents feel like they are let off the hook in regards to explaining and going into the concept of death Concept of Death:  Since the 1970s it has been accepted that death is not a single, unidimensional concept o A complex concept with many subcomponents  What varies is how people define these subcomponents and what they include  Investigators have varied considerably in the exact number of components recognized and how they define them  Four key components: Irreversibility, Nonfunctionality, Universality, and Causality  Personal Mortality: Fifth component according to Speece and Brent’s research Definitions of Key Components:

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 Irreversibility: The understanding that once the physical body dies it cannot be made alive again o There is no returning (aside from medical miracles) o Once the body ceases to work, the life is done o Children have difficulties understanding this  Including that people are still alive in a diminished form in Heaven  They are often provided with confusing messages  Nonfunctionality: The understanding that once a living thing dies, all of the typical life-defining capabilities of the living physical body cease (e.g., a person is no longer able to walk, eat, see, think, and learn) o Children are often curious about what dead people might be doing o Little boy, aged 5 ½, states “He needs a cellphone”; the little boy was at his granddad’s coffin  If the man will be watching over and protecting the family in death, he’ll need a cellphone to get into contact with them all Universality: The understanding that all living things must eventually die o Universality reveals even more complex dimensions of the concept of death. Brings together four related subconcepts:  All-inclusiveness  Inevitability  Unpredictability  Personal mortality 

Subconcepts of Universality:

All-inclusiveness: No living thing is exempt from death (e.g., Does everyone die?)  Realize that you’re included in there, too  Inevitability: Death is unavoidable for all living things (e.g., Does everyone have to die?)  Unpredictability: Any living person or thing might die at any time (e.g., When will I die?)  You can die at any time  Death is unpredictable  Personal mortality: An understanding that the individual will die (e.g., Will I die?)  Causality: There are biological reasons for the occurrence of death. This component includes recognition of both internal (e.g., disease) and external (e.g., physical trauma) causes of death (What causes death?)  Will I die if I get sick?  Death by illnesses  Internal and external events that can occur 

Summary:  Concept of death is not simple  Many dimensions and implications  Children are not likely to grasp all of these dimensions all at once

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 Awareness of the complexity of the concept of death can help adults approach children with a more sensitive ear Development of Key Concepts:  From age 5 to 9/10 typical pattern of development (usually develops in the following order):  Universality  Irreversibility  Nonfunctionality  Causality; typically occurs last  By 10 years of age, the majority of children will have acquired an understanding of the individual components of death Developmental Stages:  Children’s understanding arises out of early inklings and direct encounters  Systematic study of the development of children’s understanding of death began in the 1930s (Anthony, 1939)  Maria Nagy’s developmental theory - best known and most frequently mentioned  In Budapest (before WWII), she asked 378 children 3-10 years of age: “What is death?”  One of the first true studies that looked at children’s concepts of what death is (cross-sectional design)  Children were asked to write, draw, and talk about their ideas and feelings about death  Young children, especially aged 3 to 5, were encouraged to discuss and draw their concepts of death  According to Nagy, children’s understanding of death developed in three stages  Stage 1 (3-5 years old); life in a diminished form  Do not deny death, however, there is no definitive death (life in a diminished form)  Loss and recognition of this loss, are understood by the child  It is just their conception of death that is under-developed  Dead people are similar to living people, but their lives are severely restricted (e.g., don’t eat, cannot interact with the living)  Death is not seen as final. Thought of as a departure, life continued elsewhere  Children react to the being separated from the deceased  Stage 2 (5 or 6-8 or 9 nine years old); personification of death, escapable  One 9-year-old states:  “Death is very dangerous. You never know what minute he is going to carry you off with him. Death is invisible, something nobody has ever seen in all the world. But at night he comes to everybody and carries them off with him. Death is like a skeleton. All the parts are made of bone. But then when it

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begins to be light, when it’s morning, there’s not a trace of him. It’s dangerous, death.”  The idea that you can ward off death  Death is remote (i.e., A person who can come and get you)  More developed than a 5-year-old in stage 1, but still not fully developed and understanding  Personification of death, escapable (“kill the death-man so we will not die”)  Children have an aversion to the thought of death – death is depicted as a person remote from them  Death is conceived as final, but avoidable  He comes at night, so you can stay away from him during the day  Death not yet recognized as universal and personal mortality not fully acknowledged  Stage 3 (from 9 or 10 years old); final, inescapable, universal  One 10-year old girl states: “It means the passing of the body. Death is a great squaring of accounts in our lives. It is a thing from which our bodies cannot be resurrected. It is like the withering of flowers”  Death is a process operating within us, a process in which bodily life ends  Death is personal, inevitable and final  Realistic view of death emerges from this point forward 

Summary:  Nagy’s findings remain useful today  It is still a frequently mentioned theory  The tendency to personify death between 5 and 9 seems to have diminished greatly  This seems to have diminished over time  i.e., Children do not draw bones as a depiction of death as much as they had in Nagy’s study  However, some authors feel that avoidability, not personification, is the key concept in Stage 2 (Knoocker, 1973)  Children still do this, especially if children are asked to draw the concept of death  There is also a tendency for children in America to move through the stages at an earlier age than was found by Nagy (Corr, 2011)  In both studies, all children were normal-functioning individuals  There are still cultural factors at play, however  This still provides an “average” picture of what a typical child will know/believe about death in a particular population

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 Age is still a very good indicator of what a child does and does not understand  New childhood: with exposure to mass media and high technology  This is what more contemporary authors are suggesting Young Children’s Conceptions of Death in Infancy: Infancy (birth – 3 years old)  Limited cognitive abilities, however, he or she has emotional responses to the death of a familiar person  Lack of communication abilities makes it difficult to say for certain what is being experienced  Routines and awareness of the absence of the loss of a primary caregiver is noticed, but it is unsure if the child is grieving or reacting to the stress of those around them  Due to lack of object permanence prior to 4 months, it is difficult to say if children recognize the loss of a person before that, but that they can certainly experience distressed reactions after this time  Bowlby (1980):  Infants less that one year are attached to certain people in their environment and will recognize if a familiar person is gone  Children may be responding to the emotional states of those around them o With lack of communicative ability, it is difficult to be sure of what they understand Factors Affecting the Development of the Concept of Death:  Kenyon (2001) examined factors affecting the development of the concept of death  She found age to be a strong and reliable predictor of the acquisition of the death concept, and examined the influence of other factors: o Cognitive Ability o Gender and Socioeconomic Status o Cultural Effects o Experience o Social-Emotional Factors  Cognitive Ability: Although, children’s understanding of death proceeds along with their general cognitive development, studies have yielded inconsistent results  We would expect that this should predict their ability to understand these concepts, but the literature on this is very mixed  The way we ask the children: “Tell me your thoughts” o Verbal abilities enhances the organization of death concepts and communication of this understanding  Can help organize and communicate ideas on this concept  Children with lower verbal skills are going to reflect a lower understanding, but this does not mean that they actually do not understand  Studies using interview method may obscure the demonstration of understanding by children with lower verbal skills

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 Gender and Socioeconomic Status: Neither gender nor socioeconomic status has much affect on the acquisition of the concept of death  Cultural Effects: Cross-culturally, children are more similar than different in their acquisition of the concept of death  However, there are some noteworthy differences, such as children who have been exposed to death stimuli (e.g., war zones) understanding irreversibility and nonfunctionality sooner than other children o This can be argued as an effect of experience, not culture  Experience: Exposure to family deaths or to their own life threatening illnesses speeds up a child’s understanding of death  Children with exposure to death generally have a better understanding of causes of death and personal mortality compared to children with no personal/direct exposure to death  Social-Emotional Factors: Highly anxious children aged 6 to 11 have more trouble understanding universality than do less anxious children  Children in this age group who are asked about the death of a hypothetical relative show less understanding of the concept of death than when they are asked about the death of a stranger o Anxiety may impair their communication ability  Hypothetical death of a relative invokes anxiety that disables them from discussing their comprehension of the subject of death Death in Disney Films: Implications for Children’s Understanding of Death:  You can’t make any strong cause and effect conclusions from this study  Cox et al. (2005) examined the potential influence of Disney films on children’s concepts of death  Examined the portrayal of death and grieving in Disney films geared toward children, focusing on five factors: character status, depiction of death, death status, emotional reaction, and causality  Parents’ role in children’s comprehension of death  Many children tend not to discuss death with their parents and friends – unpleasant subject  Parents can talk about death in a confusing way – trying to protect children o Yes, the reality of death is not pleasant, but avoiding a direct conversation can cause greater confusion in the child  Many adults often hinder children’s understanding of death by using confusing terms and abstract language to explain the concept of death (e.g., “sleeping for a long time” or “taken a long trip”) o Children are trying to develop this concept and then are offered these ridiculous pieces of information  Using popular animated films may be one way to intervene and may provide a foundation for discussion between children and adults  Examined the portrayal of death and grieving in Disney films geared toward children, focusing on 5 factors  Method  10 Disney Classic animated films were analyzed

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 Movies were selected only if a death occurred or was a theme in the plotline  The movies were chosen from various decades in order to sample the portrayal of death across time in Disney films  The movies examined for this study were: o Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) o Bambi (1942) o Sleeping Beauty (1959) o The Little Mermaid (1989) o Beauty and the Beast (1991) o The Lion King (1994) o The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) o Hercules (1997) o Mulan (1998) o Tarzan (1999)  Two coders watched the movies together and coded the data individually. Each character’s death was analyzed by the following five coding criteria o Character Status o Depiction of Death o Death Status o Emotional Reaction o Causality Method: Character Status  Character Status: This category refers to the role the character that died played in the plot (e.g., good guy vs. bad guy – protagonist vs. antagonist) Method: Death Status  Death Status: refers to if a death was a true end of life or if it was shown as something negotiable o Permanent/final: the character does not return in any form o Reversible death is one where a character returns in one of two ways.  Reversible-same form: the character seemingly comes back from a dead or seemingly dead state in his or her original body  Reversible-altered form: the character returns either in a physically transformed state or in the form of a spirit Method: Depiction of Death  Depiction of Death: o Explicit: the audience sees the character is definitely dead o Implicit: the audience can only assume that the character is dead o Sleep death: refers to an instance in which a character falls into a state of prolonged sleep Method: Emotional Reaction  Emotional Reaction: how the other characters in the movie responded to or dealt with death o Positive emotion: Character(s) being visibly happy (e.g., smiling, cheering) or showing signs of relief

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o Negative emotion: Character(s) reacting with frustration, remorse, anger, or with general signs of sadness (e.g., crying) o Lacking emotion: Character(s) reacting to death as if it is inconsequential or the death is not dealt with or acknowledged by all characters  Method: Causality  Causality: refers to what led to or caused the death and whether the death was portrayed as being justified or unjustified o Purposeful death: a character dies as the result of another character’s intent to harm or kill him or her o Accidental death: the death was unintentional and was the result of an unplanned event o Justified deaths: the character who died warranted punishment; deserved to die o Unjustified deaths: the character did not do anything wrong; did not deserve to die  Results:  Results: Depiction of Death o We see that both the good guys and the bad guys die  Results: Death Status o Who is allowed to come back?  Death is final for all of the bad guys  Good guys have about a 50% chance of coming back in some type of reversible state  Results: Emotional Reactions o Positive (or no) emotion for the death of a bad guy occurs every single time o Negative emotions for the majority of the death of good guys  Results: Cause of Death o Accidents for bad guys are always justified  They deserved to have that accident o Accidents are unjustified in most cases for good guys  Something/someone evil tried to harm the good character o Is death ever really justified?  What are you teaching children? Discussion:  Character Status: Deaths shown were comprised of equal amounts of “good” and “bad” characters; even characters that we care about die.  Depiction of Death: Explicit and Implicit deaths were equal. Traumatic or helpful?  Sleep deaths: What are the implications of these types of deaths?  Most deaths were permanent. This reinforces that death is permanent  6 deaths were reversible; all reversible deaths were protagonists. What is the message?  Emotional Reaction: Almost all of the emotion was shown as a result of protagonist’s death  This may provide some children models or grieving  When bad guys die it is applauded (cheering)

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Causality  All justified deaths were those of the antagonists  Death of antagonists resulted from accidents Question  Can we make conclusion statements about the effects of media on children’s understanding of death?  Can we use these movies to open up discussions of death with children?...