The "preplay" technique, an advance organizer summarizing important plot events before sections of a story, is examined for its effectiveness in facilitating children's selective attention to and comprehension of televised stories. One hundred and sixty first through fourth grade children, equally distributed by grade and sex, were…

The purpose of this study was to assess developmental differences in children's visual attention to, and comprehension of, a prosocial television program as a function of varying "preplay" formats. (Preplays were defined as advance organizers designed to help a child select, order, and integrate critical televised content into a memory…

Preplays (critical material presented before a televised program) were inserted before three sections of a televised story to determine if they would improve children's attention and comprehension by providing overall plot structure for selecting and integrating important story events. The preplays varied on two orthogonal dimensions: presence or…