Poster #29 - Japanese Children’s Ability to Distinguish Between Aging and Illness Through Understanding of Recoverability From Physical Damage

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Cognitive Process

Integrative Statement

Understanding of illness has been extensively studied as a field of naive biology since the 1980s, and it has been shown that even young children understand various important dimensions of illness (e.g., Siegal, 1988; Kalish, 1996). However, it is noted that some aspects are difficult not only for young children but also for adults to understand (Toyama, 2015). Making a distinction between illness and some other similar biological phenomena could be difficult for children to understand. Aging may be one such biological phenomenon because it is similar to illness in that both of them involve the deterioration of physical functions, which causes children to confuse the two. In order to distinguish one from the other, it may help for children to focus on the difference between the two in terms of recoverability from deterioration. In the case of normal aging symptoms such as increased wrinkles and greying of hair, it is difficult for the person to return to their original state, whereas most of the illnesses and injuries experienced by young children on a daily basis are recoverable. Based on findings of prior research indicating that even four-year-olds understand that damage to the body heals naturally (Backschider, Shatz, & Gelman, 1993), it is presumed that young children understand that illnesses and injuries are recoverable. However, there are only a few studies (Nakashima, 2010) focusing on children’s understanding of aging, so it is not known yet whether children think about aging differently from illness. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether children distinguish between aging and illness in terms of recoverability from physical damage. We presented 23 6-year-olds (MA = 6:0; RA=5:8-6:4) and 16 9-year-olds (MA = 9:2; RA=8:1-9:8) with 8 scenarios consecutively, of which 4 were about aging and 4 were about illness and injury. In the scenarios, 80-year-old protagonists exhibited certain physical damages either due to aging (many wrinkles, hair loss, grey hair, and waist distortion) or due to illness and injury (runny nose, cough, stomach ache, and abrasion). They were then asked what would happen to the damages a week later or the next summer, and they chose from two options: recover or remain as it is. As a result of a 2 phenomena (illness/aging) * 2 periods(1 week later/next summer) * 2 grades (6-year-olds/9-year-olds) mixed design ANOVA using the number of recovery options chosen as the dependent variables, main effects of phenomena（F(1,38)=171.09, p<.01）, periods（F(1,38) =30.73, p<.01）, and an interaction between phenomena and grades were significant（F(1,38)=7.75, p<.01）. These results indicate that six-year-olds as well as nine-year-olds think that recoverability is higher in illness compared to aging. Furthermore, the age difference was only observed in the aging phenomena, and six-year-olds showed a greater tendency of thinking that the physical damage due to aging was recoverable compared to nine-year olds. The results were discussed from the viewpoint of children’s conceptualization of aging and young children’s optimism (Lockhart et al., 2008).

Author

• Nobuko Nakashima, Niigata University
  Presenting Author