Understanding Of Death

The present study, conducted on students in a primary school in Shanghai, aims to investigate children's understanding of death, which may be influenced by the information of death in online games.In the pre-investigation, the first stage of the research, a semi-structured interview with tasks was used on 20 students, to explore their understanding of death, and to analyze the feasibility of the questionnaire test. Besides, the condition of students involving in online games and the characteristics of death in such games were also investigated. Based on the results of pre-investigation, we developed a questionnaire with 3 factors (judgment of virtual death, universality and the nonfunctionality of death) in the second stage of this research and collected data from 400 students.The results indicate that:(1) Without impact of subjective factors, primary school students could understand the emotionality and the nonfunctionality of death thoroughly.(2) Ceiling effect is found on students from grade 1 to grade 5 when they were asked to do the life judgment of human or animals. And the ceiling effect of death judgments firstly occurs at grade 2. Children's ability to do the death judgment on plants is poorer than that on human or animals, this may due to the concepts' differences.(3) The sub-concepts of virtual death in online games is characterized by universality, reversibility, uninevitability, emotionality, etc., which differs from the death in real world.(4) Students from grade 1 to grade 5 could not completely distinguish between the virtual death concept in online games and the death concept in real world.To conclude, it is necessary to add death education to life education in primary school, following children's understanding of death. It is also important to monitor and guide children to get the information of death through family education.