Aim[ac]ee Dorr examines children's interaction with television, emphasizing the child's active role in making sense of television. She discusses specific examples of programmes watched by children; the sense they make of advertising and programming; what children know about the medium; what a formal feature is; what effects television can have; how effects are studied and what literacy curricula look like.

The material presented in this second edition provides a current and complete summary and synthesis of what is known about television's role in, and impact on, children's cognitive and social development. Unlike other books on television or child development, this text directly combines communication and psychological perspectives for a more comprehensive and accurate look at children's television experiences. The integration of information from these diverse sources addresses the complexity of the interactions among child, content, technological, and contextual variables, and provides a broader conceptualization of both theoretical and practical issues. In short, this volume carefully considers the complex and significant interplay between other forces in a child's life with the television viewing experience. Providing updated research findings in the major areas and including changing trends in television content and viewing patterns, this new edition offers new sections on technology and its influence and an entirely new chapter on television's impact on exceptional and high risk children. Also included are research findings on the many other media uses now available to children besides television, as well as those that affect children's use of television--VCRs, cable programs, computers, the Internet, video games, and virtual reality--in addition to a chapter on intervention and critical viewing strategies.

This seminal volume is a comprehensive review of the literature on children's television, covering fifty years of academic research on children and television. The work includes studies of content, effects, and policy, and offers research conducted by social scientists and cultural studies scholars. The research questions represented here consider the content of programming, children's responses to television, regulation concerning children's television policies, issues of advertising, and concerns about sex and race stereotyping, often voicing concerns that children's entertainment be held to a higher standard. The volume also offers essays by scholars who have been seeking answers to some of the most critical questions addressed by this research. It represents the interdisciplinary nature of research on children and television, and draws on many academic traditions, including communication studies, psychology, sociology, education, economics, and medicine. The full bibliography is included on CD. Arguably the most comprehensive bibliography of research on children and television, this work illustrates the ongoing evolution of scholarship in this area, and establishes how it informs or changes public policy, as well as defining its role in shaping a future agenda. The volume will be a required resource for scholars, researchers, and policy makers concerned with issues of children and television, media policy, media literacy and education, and family studies.

Based on a study examining the meaning of the term "media literacy" in children, this volume concentrates on audiovisual narratives of television and film and their effects. It closely examines children's concepts of real and unreal and how they learn to make distinctions between the two. It also explores the idea that children are protected from the harmful effects of violence on television by the knowledge that what they see is not real. This volume is unique in its use of children's own words to explore their awareness of the submerged conventions of television genres, of their functions and effects, of their relationship to the real world, and of how this awareness varies with age and other factors. Based on detailed questionnaire data and conversations with 6 to 11-year-old children, carried out with the support of a fellowship at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, the book eloquently demonstrates how children use their knowledge of real life, of literature, and of art, in intelligently evaluating the relationship between television's formats, and the real world in which they live.

Since the mid-1970s a shift in perspective has occurred on the relationship between TV and young viewers. Researchers, parents, teachers, policymakers, and consumer advocate groups have shown increased criticism of televisions's role as social educator, babysitter, agent for mass consumer socialization, and perpetrator of questionable social values, morals, and mythical human behaviors. Educators intersted in understanding the complex and wide-ranging contrversies about the influence of television on children will find much in this edited collection to clarify their understanding of the empirical research, educational practice, and national policy issues raised by the relationship between TV and children. The empirical and theoretical studies in Part I explore the interactive relationship between TV and the child viewer. In opposition to the widely held view that the child is a passive recipient of TV information, these studies show that children's background knowledge and their cognitive and experimental skills influence how they interpret TV content, symbolic form, and ultimately, its influence on what kind of learning takes place. The effects of reciprocal relationships of TV violence, commercial advertising and reading ability are investigated in other chapters in this section. Part II moves to practical educational questions and presents approaches to curriculum design for the teaching of critical and literate viewing skills. Innovative curricula, based on principles of liberal education, which encourage active and critical viewing, are spelled out in detail. Part III compares the policies of governments in industrialized nations in assuring the quality of children's television. An annotated list of studies and position papers published from 1975 to 1983 concludes this work.

Even when television viewing is limited, by the time the average child reaches the age of eighteen, he or she will have spent more time with television than any other activity except sleeping. The cumulative effects of this much television viewing cannot be ignored; we must learn about television's impacts and effects so we can determine the role it should play in our lives and those of our children. This book grew out of the perceived need for an authoritative sourcebook and compendium of existing research. Each chapter consists of an extensive review of the literature and research relating to numerous aspects of the broad topic, including content, commercials, viewing habits, cognitive effects, behavioral effects, educational impact, and a brief history of children's programming. The first section focuses on the more formal aspects of television and how they relate to children. Signorielli begins with a description of the history and background of children's programming and moves into a discussion of specific theoretical and institutional issues as they relate to children and television. The chapters that follow examine children's comprehension and uses of television. The second section examines the content and effects of television. These chapters focus specifically upon images in children's programming and commercials and the impact these images may have upon children's behavior and their ideas about the world. Examination of content images, relating to topics such as sex, occupational roles, and violence form a natural bridge into discussions about specific behavioral effects as well as attitudes and opinions relating to these issues. The third section examines research relating to learning and academic achievement--how television has helped and/or hindered the education of our children. The final section assesses the impact of new television technologies--video cassette recorders and cable television--as they relate to children. It also takes a hard look at how television's potential for children could be realized from a policy perspective as well as hands-on advice for parents and teachers. The appendix provides specific information about recent advances in children's programming and videotapes. Signorielli's sourcebook will be essential reading for parents and teachers concerned about the impact of television upon children. Communications scholars will also find it a source of considerable insight and direction.