Use of Play for Assessing Children's Death Concepts: A Reexamination

O. Weininger reported large discrepancies between the proportions of young children's accurate concepts of death expressed in play and those expressed in interviews. He suggested that play is more effective than verbal expression for understanding young children's concepts of death and that verbally and play-expressed concepts are discrepant until ages 8 or 9. The present research was carried out to test Weininger's conclusions with a different and larger sample. Koocher's four questions were used to interview 141 children ages 3 to 7 yr. and Weininger's 2 play situations were presented to a subsample of 84 children. Most differences between the proportions of accurate responses to the questions and those to the play situations were non-significant, so superiority of play over interview for assessing young children's concepts of death was not demonstrated. Similarly, young children's verbal and play expressions were not discrepant.