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The purposes of this research are to explore the children''s
cognition of death , the factors which influence the cognition,
and the reaction of death.The research employs qualitative
method ,and individual interview, focus group , drawing ,and
story-talking are used to collect data. The interviewees were 23
girls and boys（ages 9 to 12）.The researcher uses prolonged
engagement, persistent observation, triangulation, referential
adequacy materials, peer debriefing , member check , and
reflexive journal ,and thick description to establish the
trustworthiness and authenticity of the research.According to
the interviewing data , the researcher induces children''s
cognition of death to "physical death concept" and "metaphysical
death concept". The meaning of "physical death concept" is
children understand biological ,scientific or natural death
concept. It contains four sub-concepts, including "everyone will
die.", "a dead person can''t come back to life.", "breathless,
colorless, immobile", and "why people die？Is it natural？Is it
fated？".In the other hand ,"metaphysical death concept" means
religious ,or enigmatic concept of death. It contains five sub-
concepts ,including "death is ending and beginning", "bogy
catches someone, and he will die.", "soul runs up and down.",
"there is another world after death.", and "Hades'' judgment
mirror and merit-fault book".The factors related to children''s
death cognition include age, religious ,belief ,culture,
experience about death ,and various origins of information come
from school education ,teachers ,parents and the other relatives
, classmates, and TV ,medium, and child''s books. As to children''
s reaction of death, the researcher have found that when
grandparents die, children will feel reject , doubt, confused,
curious, no special emotion , sorry and sympathy, sorrow and sad
, helpless and ignored. When children''s good friends die，they
will feel reject, shock and doubt, sad sorrow, and anger. When
child''s pets die, they will also feel reject, shock and doubt,
sad and sorrow, fear and afraid, self-condemned and anger with
others. Most of the children express anxiety when they think
about the death of their relatives and themselves . Beside , the
researcher also found that children have different attitude
toward life.As the results and findings in the research, the
researcher makes some substantiate claims and suggestions to
parents, teachers, school ,social workers, counselors,
institution. Based on the result and limits in the research, the
researcher offers some suggestions about research method
,problem , and subject for following studies.
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