An
Investigation into the Relationship of Children's Cognitive Development
and of their Concepts of Illness
G. Dimigen, K. Ferguson |
The
relationship between chronological age, conservation ability and
concepts of illness was investigated in 5- to 7-year old primary
school children. Four conservation tasks were used: conservation
of number, substance, length and liquid. The children's concepts
of illness were assessed according to Bibace & Walsh's scoring
system, which assumes Piaget's stages of cognitive development. The
analysis of the data showed that the number of concrete-logical explanations
varied both with chronological age and conservation ability. However,
the number of pre-logical explanations of illness stayed constant
over different age groups and over different levels of conservation
ability. The increased number of concrete-logical explanations by
the older children was due to the fact that more questions were answered
by these children. It was concluded that changes in the understanding
of illness are better explained by an increase in information than
by a qualitative shift from one cognitive stage to another.
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