The Leventhal model provides a useful framework within which to investigate children's knowledge and understanding of mental illness. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are discussed.

This paper reports two studies that investigated children's conceptions of mental illness using a naïve theory approach, drawing upon a conceptual framework for analysing illness representations which distinguishes between the identity, causes, consequences, curability, and timeline of an illness. The studies utilized semi‐structured interviewing and card selection tasks to assess 6‐ to 11‐year‐old children's conceptions of the causes and consequences (Study 1) and the curability and timeline (Study 2) of different mental and physical illnesses/ailments. The studies revealed that, at all ages, the children held coherent causal–explanatory ideas about the causes, consequences, curability, and timeline of both mental and physical illnesses/ailments. However, while younger children tended to rely on their knowledge of common physical illnesses when thinking about mental illnesses, providing contagion and contamination explanations of cause, older children demonstrated differences in their thinking about mental and physical illnesses. No substantial gender differences were found in the children's thinking. It is argued that children hold coherent conceptions of mental illness at all ages, but that mental illness only emerges as an ontologically distinct conceptual domain by the end of middle childhood.

Again, no significant links were found. Study 5 investigated whether children hold an integrated category of living things, one that includes both animals and plants, by looking at their generalisations from four different exemplars (child, dog, duck and rosebush). Age-related differences and differences depending upon exemplar were again revealed. It is concluded that these findings can be best explained by positing that children hold naYve theories of biology, and that the development of these theories does not appear to be affected by the health status of the child, parental health attitudes, or the presence of health-related objects in the child's home.

No abstract

Using children's naïve theory of biology as a framework, this study investigated children's developing understanding of illness by examining their generalisation of illness to biological and non-biological categories. In addition to differences associated with age, the children's health status was investigated for any possible links with their understanding. Healthy and chronically-ill children, aged 4-11 years, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, according to which exemplar (child, dog or duck) was described as suffering from an imaginary illness. Using a card-sorting technique, the children assessed whether each entity out of 30 entities (five representatives in each of six categories: humans, mammals, non-mammals, birds, plants and artifacts) could be afflicted by that illness. The children's generalisations indicated a grasp of the distinctiveness of the various categories, although they seemed less certain about the biological status of plants. Furthermore, the type of exemplar on which the children had been taught influenced their responses. However, the children's reasoning appeared unaffected by their health status and largely unaffected by age or gender.