Children's understanding of death: a review of three components of a death concept.
This review of the empirical literature on the development of the concept of death focuses on 3 components of that concept: irreversibility, nonfunctionality, and universality. These findings overall suggest that the majority of healthy children in modern urban-industrial societies achieve an understanding of all 3 components between 5 and 7 years of age. Since this is also the age at which most children make the transition from preoperational to concrete-operational thinking, some relationship between these 2 processes seems likely. However, attempts to empirically validate that relationship have thus far yielded ambiguous results. Possible reasons for this ambiguity are suggested.
D000293:Adolescent; D001293:Attitude to Death; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003210:Concept Formation; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant