A cross-cultural comparison of israeli and american children's death concepts

Abstract

Cross-cultural comparisons are a valuable means of exploring the impact of sociocultural and environmental variables on a child's understanding of the concepts related to death. Exploration of an empirical nature has been hampered by the absence of an appropriate instrument in the English literature for quantifying death concepts in the young child. We report our experience utilizing the Smilansky Death Concept Questionnaire, a structured interview for the examination of human and animal death conceptualization of children aged 4–12 years, in our cross-cultural comparison of Israeli and American lower-socioeconomic-class children in prekindergarten through second grade. Significant differences, with Israeli children performing higher than American children, were noted for all grade levels in two factors, that of irreversibility and finality (with the exception of irreversibility for second-grade children) and for total death concept score. No significant differences were noted for the two remaining factors of causality and inevitability and old age for any grade. Tentative explanations are explored for this observed discrepancy in the nature and level of death concept acquisition between Israeli and American children in this sample, and similarities across cultures are emphasized. Implications of the impact of sociocultural and environmental influences on a young child's developmental understanding of the phenomenon of death are suggested.