We used a mixed-method approach to explore parent and child perspectives on death in Puebla, Mexico. While all children in this sample displayed a biological understanding of death, they also combined this knowledge with spiritual information.
We manipulated perceptions of variability by priming students before a lesson and by highlighting variability in the diagrams used during the lesson. Priming led to more endorsement of metamorphosis, but only among those with high prior knowledge.
We investigated 3 to 11 year old children and adults’ reasoning about life-cycle changes. The results suggest that endorsement of the different patterns is influenced by age and familiarity.