Investigating the Changes of the Concept of Death among non _ Shahed Children of Tehran

Degree : Clinical Psychology
Supervisor : Mahmoud Mansour

The present research is intended to investigate and compare the changes of the concept of death among three groups of children (shahed children who have experienced the death of their fathers and those who did not) and to determines how well can the death of father can change the concept of death and to see if this experience has caused changes off _ limits of Piage about understanding changes.
The research methodology is post occurrence. The research community is composed of 543 children in 1st and 2nd Kindergartens region 8 of Shahed and1st and 2nd Kindergartens of region 7 of non _ Shahed of Tehran as well as the first and fifth grade primary school students Salehin and Abshenasan schools in regions 4 and 7 of Tehran. The volume of the research is 119 persons that have been chosen at random. In order to analyze the data collected analyzing variance with two variables and correlative coefficient were used. The means of the research were:
1.Personal and Familial Condition Questionnaire
2.Questionnaire on the Concept of Death
3.Living Being Tests
4.Intellectual Capacity Test

With regard to the presented hypotheses the results indicate that:
1.The effects resulting from the death of father in the preschool stage between the two shahed and non _ shahed groups has caused differences in understanding motionless indicators and inconvertible senselessness as well as the overall concept of death.
2.Between cognitive changes and changes of the death concept is there a positive and meaningful correlation.
3.The relation between thinking alive and the concept of death is negative and meaningful.
4.The minds of the shahed children were busy with different things in comparison with the non _ shahed students. This means that the shahed children were more concerned with death. Finally the qualitative analysis of the data shows that the children who were not able to understand the concepts, think that death is a reversible, not comprehensive and transient phenomenon. They negate their own death and think that the dead are able to do things.