The influence of story schema development on children's attention to television and memory of program content was examined in a study that involved two separate testing sessions. The expectation was that maximum effort would be given to program elements most central to comprehension of a television story and that this allocation strategy would be most evident for children who understood the structure of stories and could use this knowledge to guide allocation of attention effort. In the first testing session, children (5 to 8 years old) watched two stories on television and their schema skills were assessed after viewing each story. In the second session, children watched a television story (primary task) and depressed a button in response to periodic tones (secondary task). Reaction time to the secondary task was the measure of attention to the primary task. The development of story schema was found to be related to reduced processing effort, increased memory of central story content, increased efficiency, and greater flexibility of capacity allocation strategies. Results also suggested that capacity allocation was a function of both perceived task difficulty and the type of mental operations children performed while watching television stories. (Author/HOD)