Assesses the variable amounts of attention that are required for a viewer to process two kinds of interruptions common to television: the shift from one message to a different, unexpected message; and the reference to previously presented material. Interprets results in terms of limited capacity and attentional inertia models of attention. (RS)

Interviews were conducted with 721 students in fourth, sixth, and eighth grades to study whether children's perceived reality of television would affect the relationship between pro-social and anti-social television content and pro-social and anti-social behavior. Social behavior variables, a perceived reality index, and television exposure…

Multidimensional scaling is used to quantify the relative appeal of television characters as behavior models for children. (Author/STS)

Summarizes results from a series of psychological experiments about how people process information from television and discusses the results in relation to six issues, including size of stimulus units and complexity of television stimuli. (DF)

Prime-time television dramas were analyzed to isolate counter-stereotypical sex-role portrayals, and children were surveyed to determine the impact of these portrayals on sex-role perceptions. The appeal of male and female television characters as role models was also tested. (LS)

Examines the relationship between development of story schema skills and strategies children adopt for attending to and remembering television narratives. Finds advanced story schema skills were related to reduced processing effort, increased memory of central story content, greater flexibility of allocation strategies, and better coordination…

Measured children's identification with and perceived reality of television characters and children's rating of peers on 11 traits. Found, among other results, that identification with television characters was a significant predictor of the mean evaluation of peers, and that television viewing was a significant predictor of the variance in…

Studies the relationship between children's perceptions of the news and learning, and the effect of televised news story context on their perceptions. Explores the effect of news story context on learning through perceptual variables: liking the story, liking the program, believing the story, and understanding the function of the story. (JMF)

Results of a study conducted with 721 fourth, sixth, and eighth graders were not supportive of the assumed role of children's perceived reality of television in determining the impact of exposure to television on children's social behavior. (GT)

Tested the idea that exposure to television people could affect children's judgments of a real person introduced after watching television. Found that television can prime traits and provide a frame of reference for use in encoding new information about people. (PD)

Tests the proposition that message structure (cuts) affects attention to television differently, depending on whether the cuts link related or unrelated content. Finds cuts in unrelated sequences require more attention than cuts in related sequences. (NH)

Examines hemispheric differences in cortical arousal as a function of positive and negative emotional television scenes. Finds that (1) the processing of emotional content is hemispherically asymmetric; and (2) negative material produced greater cortical arousal in the right hemisphere and positive material greater arousal in the left. (MS)

Based on previous research findings and original data from school children in grades 3-6, this study examines children's perceptions of reality in television as an intervening variable between exposure to the medium and the effect of television messages. The specific focus of the current research was to isolate and identify factors which have…

This study explores the cognitive dimensions used by children in differentiating among television characters. Similarity judgments between all possible pairs of 14 television characters were analyzed using INDSCAL, a multidimensional scaling method which allows for individual or subgroup differences in scaling solutions. By linking the results of…

One hundred mother/child dyads were involved in a study to provide empirical evidence on parent/child interaction in grocery stores and on the contributions of Saturday morning television commercials to those interactions and to the purchase of candy and cereals. Data were collected in 15 supermarkets in two midwestern cities. First, the…