Preschool Assent?

In my draft, I brought up the idea of informed assent. It obviously does not apply to babies, and therefore will not be appearing in my final draft. However, it does raise some interesting questions. In particular, when does informed assent become possible?

We discussed this briefly in class, and Professor Zwicker told us that most studies give the age of seven. However, I came across a few studies in which researchers attempted to obtain informed assent from preschoolers. The research was not clinical, and involved almost no risk (it was merely observational), so there were no ethical worries in using proxy consent from parents. Nonetheless, the researchers did get some very interesting results.

Most of the children proved to be very capable of understanding the research and giving permission for it to go ahead. In one of the studies, one boy asked if he would still be allowed to play outside (Flewitt 3). This may seem a petty concern, but it indicates that he was thinking of how the study would affect his life. In this context, it seems much more advanced than one would expect.

The question still remains though: is this a sufficient indication that the children have the mental ability to give informed assent for medical research? It is hard to say. They are obviously capable of thinking on a similar level, but it is not clear that their abilities will extend to the life and death issues involved in clinical trials. So what do you think?

Research article: http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=116&sid=a6d94318-20c3-47fb-9bc9-dfa5088d1e50%40sessionmgr109