Understanding of Illness: the Generalisation of Illness According to Exemplar

Using children's naive theory of biology as a framework, this study examined children's illness conceptions. Children (aged 4-11), presented with one of four exemplars (child, dog, duck or rosebush) suffering an imaginary illness, were asked whether various entities from six categories, biological and non-biological, could also be afflicted. The children's illness generalisations differentiated between all of the categories; they not only distinguished between living and non-living things, but also recognised biological subkinds. Furthermore, the children's generalisations were significantly greater to the category of exemplar, indicating that human prototypicality is not the sole basis for children's generalisations. It is concluded that children's understanding of illness is mediated by a naïve biological theory which facilitates their systematic predictions of susceptibility to illness. University of Surrey. Her main areas of interest are: children's understanding of illness, both physical and mental; children's societal understanding, in particular children's political cognition.