title: [The body image of children of nursery school age].
abstract: Both from the view of the pediatrician (16) and the child analyst (3, 6, 9, 21), and recently, too, by behavioral biologists (15) the emotional aspects of illness and hospitalization have been treated with increasing differentiation. On the other hand there are only few studies regarding the cognitive aspects of the problem, i.e. the concepts children have of their bodies and of illness, which depend on the momentary level of their intellectual development. Children's ideas and fears arising from illness or hospitalization frequently can only be understood with the knowledge of the actual body-image. Therefore we have tried to investigate by interviews and drawings of three- to seven-year-old preschoolers their conceptions of the interior of the body and its function. The sources of these ideas were discussed and some suggestions were made how the results of the study could be used in hospital and kindergarten.
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001828:Body Image; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male
vernacular_title: Körpervorstellungen von Kindergartenkindern.