Specific impact of radio and television on children's story comprehension.

A cross-media comparison of TV and radio elucidated the specific strengths of each medium for transmitting explicit and implicit story content. 48 elementary school children in 2 age groups (6.5–8 yrs and 9–10.5 yrs) were exposed to an animated audiovisual (TV) and an audio (radio) story. A narration of the original story text served as the common soundtrack. The design was counterbalanced for story-medium combinations and orders. Except for the inclusion of characters, recall of the explicit story content was equivalent across media. However, recall of details from the story was improved with a TV presentation. Recognition of expressive language was facilitated by a radio story, whereas picture sequencing was augmented by a TV story. The radio story also elevated the use of knowledge unrelated to the story for inferences by younger Ss and verbal sources for both ages, whereas the TV story enhanced inferences based on actions. Findings emphasize the need to consider the differential impact of media for conveying explicit and implicit content. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pace and continuity of television programs: Effects on children's attention and comprehension.

16 15-min children's TV programs varying in continuity (high vs low), pace (high vs low), and animation (cartoon vs live production) were made from broadcast material and shown to 80 children from kindergarten and 1st grade and 80 children from 3rd–4th grade. Ss viewed 2 of the programs and were then tested for recall. The recall task required sequential seriation of still photos taken from the program. Older Ss attended longer and reconstructed sequences better than younger Ss. High-continuity (story) programs led to greater attention and better recall than low-continuity (magazine) programs. Low-paced shows were recalled better than high-paced shows. Older Ss recalled best when shown either low pace or story format or both. Young Ss showed additive increments in recall due to low pace and high continuity. Regression analyses indicated higher correlations between attention and recall for animated stories than for other types of programs, an effect attributed to their relatively high stereotypy in the medium. Results are interpreted as indicating evidence for development of active, schematic processing of TV by children and for strategic attending by older children, based on perceived processing demands. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Peers as mediators of television food advertisements aimed at children.

Past research on the effects of TV has focused primarily on it as a unitary force rather than as 1 source of influence in a network of cross-pressures. The present study attempted to determine how peer-modeled food preferences combined with TV food commercials to influence the food preferences of school-aged children. 40 Black and 40 White 4th graders were assigned randomly to 1 of 4 conditions: TV control, TV advertisements with similar peer-modeled food preferences, and TV advertisements with dissimilar peer-modeled food preferences. An additional 40 children served as peer models. Ss in the TV advertisement condition preferred foods in the same class as the advertised foods more frequently than did Ss in the TV control condition. Ss in the TV advertisement/peer-similar condition preferred foods like the advertised food more often than Ss in the TV advertisement condition, whereas Ss in the TV/peer-dissimilar condition preferred foods like the advertised food less frequently than did Ss in the TV advertisement condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological distance in the family as schematized by families of normal, disturbed, and learning-problem children.

Used a family doll placement technique to study psychological distance within 30 families with a disturbed and a nondisturbed boy. The father, mother, and 2 children each did the task individually, and then as a family group. Families were divided into 3 groups of 10 in which the S was (a) normal, (b) emotionally disturbed, or (c) had serious learning problems. Psychological distance was measured by the actual distance placed between doll dyads. As hypothesized, both groups of disturbed Ss placed greater distance between the mother doll and the doll representing himself than normal Ss in negative story themes. Unexpectedly, female siblings of disturbed Ss placed greater distance between the father doll and the doll representing herself than female siblings of normal Ss in negative story themes. These differences also appeared when the family group did the task. Teacher ratings showed the disturbed Ss to be more interpersonally distant and dependent than the normal Ss. (23 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Responses to "neutral" pronoun presentations and the development of sex-biased responding.

Investigated whether 36 kindergarten and 36 1st-grade children, like college students, would give male-biased responses to a "he" presentation and examined how Ss would respond to the use of "they" and "he or she" pronoun presentations. The effects of pronoun use on memory were also investigated, as were possible sex differences in responding. Each S was assigned to 1 of 3 pronoun presentation groups, each of which contained an equal number of girls and boys. Ss in the different groups listened to the exact same story except that Group I Ss heard the pronoun "they" used throughout the story, Group 2 Ss heard "she" or "he" used throughout the story, and Group 3 Ss heard the pronoun "he" throughout the story. Ss were then asked to retell the story and were shown pictures of a boy and a girl and asked to indicate which one the story was about. Results support the pronomial dominance theory of pronoun functioning for young children. Results also support the hypothesis that boys initially use a self-imaging response to neutral presentations. The time of transition away from this response was identified as the 1st-grade level. There was no indication that kindergarten or 1st-grade girls use the self-imagining approach. The "they" presentation appeared to be the most neutral. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental imagery helps eight-year-olds remember what they read.

To determine whether 8-yr-olds can use mental imagery to improve their memory of prose they read, 43 experimental Ss were given practice constructing mental images of progressively longer prose passages (sentences, paragraphs, and a short story) and were shown examples of good images. 43 controls were exposed to the prose material, but did not practice constructing mental images. Experimental Ss read 17 segments of a short story and constructed a mental image for each segment after reading the segment. Control Ss read the same story segments and were instructed to "do whatever you can or have to" in order to remember the story. Experimental Ss answered significantly more short-answer questions about the story than controls did. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of the medium on children's story apprehension.

Compared children's apprehensions of an unfamiliar story either read to them from an illustrated book or presented as a comparable televised film. 24 younger and 24 older children (mean ages 7.6 and 9.6 yrs, respectively) were randomly assigned to one medium condition and individually presented the story. Response measures examined recall of story content as well as inferences about characters and events. Ss exposed to the televised story remembered more story actions, offered estimates of shorter elapsed time and distance traveled for carrying out a repeated story event, and relied more on visual content as the basis for inferences. In comparison, Ss who were read the story in picture book form recalled more story vocabulary, based their inferences more on textual content, general knowledge, and personal experience, and made more use of the storytelling situation as an opportunity to ask questions and make comments about the story. To the extent that children have repeated experience with specific media, such differential medium effects on apprehension suggest important implications for children's cognitive development. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of genre expectations on text comprehension.

This article investigates whether expectations about discourse genre influence the process and products of text comprehension. Ss read texts either with a literary story or with a news story as the purported genre. Subsequently, they verified statements pertaining to the texts. Two experiments demonstrated that Ss reading under a literary perspective had longer reading times, better memory for surface information, and a poorer memory for situational information than those reading under a news perspective. Regression analyses of reading times produced findings that were consistent with the memory data. The results support the notion that readers differentially allocate their processing resources according to their expectations about the genre of a text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective memory for positive and negative story content in children with high self- and peer-ratings of symptoms of depression.

Evaluated 322 6th-grade students (aged 10–13 yrs) who completed the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and a peer nomination inventory for depression (PNID). 89 Ss had high or low self-reported depressive symptoms (DSYs) and 62 had high or low peer-reported DSYs. Ss were presented with a story consisting of 10 positive events (PEs) and 10 negative events (NEs) and a memory task. The bulk of the findings are contradictory to a mood-congruent learning effect, in that Ss with high depressive ratings underrecognized NEs and overreported PEs. The significant interaction between group status (high or low depressive rating) and valence of story events for recognition memory, found with both CDI and PNID (males only) suggests that S's status interacts with memory for PEs and NEs. However, the interaction suggests that DSYs impair recognition memory for NEs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of another's perspective on children's recall of previously misconstrued events.

Children's abilities to reframe their memories of events after hearing another child's perspective of the same events were examined, and links between memory reframing, cognitive ability, and social competence were explored. Nine- to 11-year-olds (N = 79) were told to imagine that the events in a narrated story happened to them. Next, they heard another story that described either the same events (experimental condition) or unrelated events (control condition) from another child's perspective. The children in the experimental group reframed their memories in light of the alternative perspective, whereas the children in the control condition did not. Children with higher cognitive scores had higher memory reframing scores and received higher social competence ratings than children with lower cognitive scores. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pictures, imagery, and retarded children's prose learning.

96 10–16 yr old educable mental retardates were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental conditions to listen to a 20-sentence story: Picture Ss viewed illustrations of the story, imagery Ss were instructed to generate mental pictures of the story, repetition control Ss heard each sentence of the story twice, and control Ss simply listened to the story once. Planned comparisons revealed that picture Ss recalled more story information than did Ss in all other groups. Differences among the other conditions, age by conditions interactions, and age differences per se were not statistically significant. A number of theoretically and practically interesting issues are discussed in the context of recent prose learning findings with normal children. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preschoolers' retention of televised events: Is a picture worth a thousand words?

Three experiments assessed the degree to which 72 preschool children (mean age 54.2 mo) and 27 college students remembered information from the video vs audio portions of TV shows. Two types of cartoons were generated to examine this issue: a composite cartoon in which the sound track was inappropriate for the events portrayed visually and a simple cartoon in which certain events were presented only visually, only aurally, or both visually and aurally. After viewing a cartoon, Ss answered recognition questions, some of which were specific to information conveyed in only one of the modalities. For children, retention of events portrayed visually was consistently higher than retention of auditory information, whereas adults showed comparable retention of the 2 types of events. For the composite cartoons, very few children realized that a marked discrepancy existed in the visual vs auditory story lines. Results suggest that preschoolers tended to ignore large parts of the audio portions of certain TV programs and paid greater attention to the visual aspects of those presentations. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's memory for auditory and visual information on television.

Examined the relationship between children's cognitive processing of video and audio information on TV. 96 5-yr-olds viewed a videotaped segment of Sesame Street followed by comprehension and recognition tests. Ss viewed experimental segments in which (a) the audio and video tracks were from the same segment (A/V match), (b) the audio and video tracks were not from the same segment (A/V mismatch), (c) the video track was presented alone, or (d) the audio track was presented alone. This design allowed unconfounded comparisons of modality-specific processing. In the A/V mismatch condition, memory for audio information was reduced more than memory for video information. However, comprehension and recognition of audio information was similar in the audio-only and A/V match conditions. Results suggest that in regular TV programs, the video information does not interfere with processing the audio information but is more salient and memorable than the audio material. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Environmental enhancement of prosocial television content: Effects on interpersonal behavior, imaginative play, and self-regulation in a natural setting.

Investigated whether (a) prosocial TV can affect the behavior of urban poor children and (b) environmental supports that stimulate rehearsal and labeling of TV content are effective in a field setting. The social, imaginative, and self-regulatory behavior of 141 children aged 2 yrs 4 mo–5 yrs 4 mo in Head Start centers was observed before and during 1 of the following 4 experimental treatments: (a) neutral films, (b) prosocial TV only, (c) prosocial TV plus related play materials, and (d) prosocial TV plus related materials plus teacher training for rehearsal using verbal labeling and role playing. Ss in each condition saw 20 films in 8 wks. Prosocial TV alone produced few behavioral differencs from the control group. When classrooms were otherwise comparable, Ss receiving TV plus related materials had high levels of positive social interaction with peers and adults, of imaginative play, and of assertiveness and aggression. Those whose teachers were trained as well showed high levels of positive social interaction with peers, imaginative play, and assertiveness, but did not increase in aggression. Self-regulatory behavior was unaffected. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nursery rhymes and prose passages: Preschoolers' liking and short-term retention of story events.

In Exps I–IV, 128 3–5 yr old preschoolers listened to stories told in either prose or verse form and then answered recognition or recall questions about each narrative's content. Ss also indicated their liking of the story on a 3-point scale. Even though Ss reported liking stories better in verse than in prose form, results demonstrate that Ss' overall short-term retention of story events was significantly higher for prose than for verse presentations. Although 40 college students in Exp V showed higher recall of the rhyming than prose passages, no overall facilitation for rhyme was found with preschoolers, even when recognition of only the rhyming facets of a narration was tested. Results are discussed in terms of a levels-of-processing approach to memory functioning. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of interactive media on children's story memory.

The authors examined the influence of interactive media on children's story memory. First-grade children (6--7-year-olds) experienced a computer-based story in 1 of 4 presentation modes: One group heard only the narration, analogous to radio. A 2nd group saw an audiovisual presentation, analogous to television. A 3rd group viewed the story and interacted with animated areas of the screen. A 4th group was yoked to the interaction group such that they observed but did not control the interaction, The audio-only group consistently recalled and comprehended poorly, but there were no differences among the other media groups. In the interaction groups, there was also no relation between the amount of interaction with the story and subsequent memory. Overall, the results for interactive media were similar to the findings for the television-like presentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional versus absorptive processing in hypnotic time estimation.

Tested the absorption hypothesis of hypnotic time estimation by giving instructions designed to induce either an absorptive or an attentional listening set to 40 Ss. All Ss listened to an involving short story embedded in an administration of the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale—Form C and provided retrospective estimates of the story's duration. Ss in the attention condition, but not those in the absorption condition, significantly underestimated the duration. However, instructional set did not influence Ss' ratings of absorption in the story. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)