THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF DEATH AMONG CHINESE AND US CHILDREN3-17 YEARS OF AGE - FROM BINARY TO FUZZY CONCEPTS

This is a cross-cultural study of the development of three components of the concept of death: Universality, Irreversibility, and Nonfunctio nality. Two hundred and sixty-two Chinese and 215 U.S. children were i nterviewed individually using a standard interview schedule. Universal ity was understood at an early age by virtually all children in both c ultures, as expected. However, the children's understanding of Irrever sibility and Nonfunctionality varied with both culture and age: overal l a greater percentage of Chinese than U.S. children gave the presumed mature adult response to each of these components; within both cultur es this percentage decreased with age, rather than increasing as predi cted by traditional theories of children's concept development. The ch ildren's explanation for their responses suggest that with increasing age children of both cultures develop a more complex but ''fuzzier'' c onceptualization of death-one which increasingly includes both 1) Non- naturalistic and Naturalistic considerations and 2) uncertainty about the exact nature and location of the boundary between life and death. Implications for a more general understanding of how such complex ''fu zzy'' concepts develop and how they might be influenced by cultural an d situational factors are discussed.