Preschool children's understanding of psychogenic bodily reactions

Poster Number

5

Format

Poster Presentation

Abstract/Artist Statement

Psychogenic bodily reactions are bodily reactions, such as ailments, that have mental origins. Notaro, Gelman, and Zimmerman (2001) completed two studies of children's reasoning about psychogenic bodily reactions. We partially replicated their second experiment with 28 3- and 4year-olds and 64 adults. Participants were asked if creatures from another planet could develop a physical response from either a psychological or a physical cause. Eight three-sentence illustrated stories with questions were presented. There was no significant difference between the mean number of psychological choices of the 3- and 4-year-olds, however adults selected more psychological choices than the children. Individual response patterns across the eight stories were categorized as primarily physical, psychological, or mixed. Similar to Notaro et al.'s results, among the primarily physical cause participants the percentage of adults was substantially less than the percentage of children. Preschool children view psychogenic bodily responses as more likely to be physical than psychological, but adults tend to expect both physical and psychological causes.

Location

Pacific Geosciences Center

Start Date

20-4-2002 9:00 AM

End Date

20-4-2002 5:00 PM

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Apr 20th, 9:00 AM Apr 20th, 5:00 PM

Preschool children's understanding of psychogenic bodily reactions

Pacific Geosciences Center

Psychogenic bodily reactions are bodily reactions, such as ailments, that have mental origins. Notaro, Gelman, and Zimmerman (2001) completed two studies of children's reasoning about psychogenic bodily reactions. We partially replicated their second experiment with 28 3- and 4year-olds and 64 adults. Participants were asked if creatures from another planet could develop a physical response from either a psychological or a physical cause. Eight three-sentence illustrated stories with questions were presented. There was no significant difference between the mean number of psychological choices of the 3- and 4-year-olds, however adults selected more psychological choices than the children. Individual response patterns across the eight stories were categorized as primarily physical, psychological, or mixed. Similar to Notaro et al.'s results, among the primarily physical cause participants the percentage of adults was substantially less than the percentage of children. Preschool children view psychogenic bodily responses as more likely to be physical than psychological, but adults tend to expect both physical and psychological causes.