This paper summarizes a series of studies investigating the nature of children's attention to television. In a study of distraction, children's visual attention was found to be affected by distractions in the environment, by the nature of the program and by the viewer's own patterns of attending. A study of the general patterns of attention to…

The purpose of this review is to determine the scientific status of the proposition that viewing television in general or viewing "Sesame Street" in particular affects children's attentional skills, abilities, or behaviors. It has been frequently claimed that television viewing negatively affects children's attentional abilities. The…