Children's Conceptions of the Causes of Illness: Understanding of Contagion and Use of Immanent Justice

15 healthy children at each of 4 grade levels (preschool, kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade) were interviewed to assess their understanding of contagion and their use of immanent justice explanations for illness and accident. Compared to older children, younger ones were more likely to overextend the concept of contagion to inappropriate ailments (i.e., to noncontagious illness and to accident), and were less likely to understand the effect of distance between people on the likelihood of transmitting contagious ailments. Younger children were far more likely than older ones to invoke immanent justice explanations for events. Children at all ages employed immanent justice explanations with greater frequency for illness than for accident or misfortune. Finally, use of immanent justice was inversely related to understanding of the rational causes of illness. Even after the effects of age had been partialed out, children's use of immanent justice explanations for contagious illness was negatively correlated with their understanding of contagion.