Relationship of recollections of first death experience to current death attitudes

Previous research (Dickinson, 1992) has investigated adults' memories of their first childhood experience with death. The present study extended this work to examine the relationship of various qualitative aspects of the first experience with death to current death attitudes. College students (196 females, 101 males) described their first childhood death experience and provided memories of: (a) who died; (b) whether parental discussion of death had occurred; (c) whether they had unanswered questions at the time; and (d) whether they had cried at the time. They then completed the Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R; Wong, Reker, & Gesser, 1994). Results indicated that although boys and girls did not respond differently to the first death experience, gender did appear to moderate the relationship between the qualities of this experience and current death attitudes.