CHILDREN’S USE OF DIFFERENT MEDIA

CHILDREN’S USE OF DIFFERENT MEDIA

Mental Effort and Social Interaction

Although fiction occurs in both written and television format, children recognize at an earlier age that books are fiction (Kelly, 1981); television looks more like real life. Thus, the perceived reality based on television is more easily confused with reality itself than is the printed construction of reality. The medium itself affects how the child can extract information from that medium and represent it in memory (Salomon, 1979, 1983, 1987). In general, television involves a lower amount of invested mental effort (AIME) than print media, although this varies with age and type of program (Bordeaux & Lange, 1991; Salomon, 1984). Lower socioeconomic status and minority children are even more likely to accept the television reality as accurate than are white middle-class children (Dorr, 1982).

Greenfield (1984) offered an insightful discussion of the historical development of media in regard to the psychological processes engaged by each medium. The invention of print several centuries ago permitted for the first time the widespread physical storage of information. People who had acquired the skill of literacy thus had access to vast amounts of information previously unavailable except through oral tradition. Literacy also had a social implication, in that it was the first medium of communication that required solitude for its effective practice (Olson, 1994).

Critics of television who fear that its advent has isolated children from social interaction are in fact concerned about an earlier effect of the onset of print media; television only continued the requirement of physical isolation, but it did not initiate it. In fact, research has shown no relationship between the amount of television watched and time spent in interpersonal activity

More recently, concern has focused on the use of the Internet and World Wide Web. Fears of web surfers being socially isolated, perhaps even socially inept, sound amazingly like concerns expressed in the early days of print and later in the early days of television. In a very provocative book, Reeves and Nass (1996) argued that we interact with computers, televisions, and other media much more similarly to the way that we interact with other people than most of us realize. For example, we treat computers with politeness and emotion and perceive them as having personalities.

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Information Extraction and Memory

In some ways radio and newspapers may have more in common cognitively with each other than either does with TV. Whereas both radio and print are heavily verbal media, television involves the pictorial dimension as well. There is a positive correlation between the comprehension of a story read from a book and one heard on the radio, but less of a relationship between a story read and one seen on television (Pezdek & Hartman, 1983; Pezdek & Stevens, 1984). This suggests that skills for extracting information from television are different from those used to extract information from the words of radio or print. Studies of television show that children derive more information from the visual component than from the verbal one (Hayes & Birnbaum, 1980), although the high degree of redundancy between the two generally aids comprehension. Overall, material presented via television was better understood than the same story presented via radio to second- and sixth-grade children (Pezdek, Lehrer, & Simon, 1984), and it was consistently remembered better, regardless of reading proficiency (Gunter, Furnham, & Griffiths, 2000). Presentations on television led to fewer later novel ideas from the child than did the same presentation on radio (Valkenburg & Beentjes, 1997). Thus, television is a very efficient way to transmit information to children, suggesting both greater potential and greater concern regarding this medium.

Beagles-Roos and Gat (1983) had children retell a story heard on the radio or seen on television. The style of the retold stories differed in an interesting fashion. Retold TV stories contained more vague references, such as the use of pronouns without identifying the referent, the use of definite articles (“the boy…”) without first introducing the referent, and other forms presupposing more shared information with the hearer. Retold radio stories provided more information, much as a radio sports play-by-play provides more information than a televised play-by-play. Having children write a story from either TV or real life, Watkins (1988) found that the amount of television the child watched determined how elaborate and complex the TV story was. Greenfield (1984) suggested that one subtle effect of watching a lot of television could be to learn a verbal style that is relatively vague in reference, much like talking face-to-face. In both cases, much shared knowledge may be assumed, and thus less must be explicitly explained. With radio and print, however, the language must be more explicit to compensate for the lack of a pictorial component.

Baggett (1979) found that adults recalled information from either a silent movie (The Red Balloon) or a constructed spoken version equally well, whereas young children remembered the silent film version better. This visual advantage in memory may be part of the appeal of television. Although it decreases somewhat with age, it is a natural characteristic of our

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television exposure. The visual continues to have some advantage even with adults, however. In delayed testing a week later, Baggett found that the adults also showed better memory for the visual than the verbal story.

The Medium and Imagination

Although media, especially television, have the potential to stimulate or reduce children’s creativity and imaginative play, overall there is much more evidence for some type of reduction effect (Valkenburg, 2001). Certainly creative play can be stimulated by watching certain TV shows, especially educational TV, but facilitated creativity does not appear to be a general effect. Sesame Street and especially the slower paced Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood have been shown to stimulate imaginative play (J.L.Singer & D.G.Singer, 1976; Tower, Singer, & Singer, 1979), whereas action- adventure shows are associated with the lowest imaginative play scores (J.L.Singer & D.G.Singer, 1981).

Reductions in creativity or imaginative play could come for several reasons. First of all, there is some evidence that television watching displaces more creative play and interferes simply by replacing that activity. Other possible explanations remain possibilities but have as yet garnered less general support (Valkenburg, 2001). TV may induce passivity, which is inconsistent with imagination and creativity, or the rapid pacing of children’s programs does not allow time for reflection and imagination. Finally, the highly visual nature of television may be so salient that it may distract from processing ideas creatively, a type of thinking that may be easier with print or radio presentation. J.L.Singer and D.G.Singer (1981) found that preschool children who watched more TV were less likely to have an imaginary playmate and showed lower scores on imaginative play.

One sometimes hears the claim that radio is the medium requiring the most imagination, due to the need to mentally fill in the missing visual aspect. A fascinating study reported in Greenfield (1984) had children complete interrupted stories told via radio or television. Results showed that radio stories evoked more novel elements in the imagined story endings than did the televised versions of the same stories. For a thorough review of the medium of radio and its effects, see MacFarland (1990).

Does watching television interfere with the development of reading skills or fantasy play? It probably depends on what activity television is replacing. See Box 5.1 for a look at several hypotheses about the effects of television on reading.

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