Argues that communication scholars and media educators in the United States can gain theoretical and practical insights by closely examining young people's media comments and by acknowledging their complex and dynamic lives. Offers an ethnographic analysis of young adolescents' comments about television. Analyzes their comments in relation to the…

This study attempts to gain information concerning the receptive, as opposed to the creative, aesthetic experience by talking to museum professionals who spend their working lives identifying, appraising, and explicating works of art. The study is based on an underlying assumption that rules and practices for looking at art exist and must be…

This study investigates children's spatial cognition in the microcomputer environment created by "HyperGami." Two categories of spatial cognition have been described: spatial visualization, which involves mentally rotating, manipulating and twisting two- and three-dimensional objects; and spatial orientation, which involves the ability…

A project on videodisc technology sponsored by the Illinois State Board of Education has captured classroom teachers teaching in their own classrooms to their own students. By digitizing this video instruction onto videodiscs preservice teachers and instructors have a visual learning tool that provides instant access to a variety of pedagogical…

One hundred seventy-one middle school students participated in a study to assess cognitive activity during television viewing. Students completed a questionnaire about their favorite programs, viewing habits, and social reality beliefs, then viewed a 17-minute professionally edited episode of a family drama and answered a multiple choice…

This study was conducted to determine whether the filmic coding elements of split screen, slow motion, generated line cues, the zoom of a camera, and rotation could aid in the development of the Euclidean space concepts of horizontality and verticality, and to explore presence and development of spatial skills involving these two concepts in…

The need to teach media competency in the schools in a systematic way has been largely unrecognized. The Media Now course of study provides an example of the type of instruction needed to teach the knowledge and skills necessary for informed media consumption and skilled media production. The course, which has been thoroughly tested and validated…

Three of four severely retarded adolescents and young adults learned to use computer-based lexigrams to request foods and, subsequently, objects. Additional request experience with lexigrams resulted in consistent improvement on labeling and comprehension tasks, emergence of subject-initiated lexigram communications, and facilitation of spoken…

Reports on a study where 111 primary age children were asked to map four model landscapes of increasing complexity. The results show an age-related progression from representing hills in elevation only to early experiments with the use of contours. Includes maps, graphs, and statistical data. (MJP)

Investigates the viewer perceptions of female and male television characters as a result of viewer sex and sex role orientation, based on the responses of 677 young adults to the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ). Viewer gender had an impact on the rating of female characters. (FMW)

Over a school year, researchers had first graders talk and write about paintings, picture books, and films while participating in a program that introduced them to visual literacy. Researchers found that, over the school year, children's choices of pictures and volume of language changed and that urban and suburban children differed. (SM)

This study examined the design, aesthetics, and functionality of educational and noneducational Web pages from the perspective of visual literacy. Educational Web pages were subdivided into K-12 and college/university settings, and the non-education categories included commercial, publications and communications, informational and cultural, and…

A study of 55 growth-disturbed children, aged 8-17, was conducted to assess how rate of physical maturation and pubertal development influences cognitive and neuropsychological functioning. The sample included 27 boys with short stature and delayed pubertal development (SSB), 15 girls with delayed puberty (DPG), and 13 girls with precocious…

The purposes of the paper are to discuss use of a concept formation model in art education and to suggest ways in which teachers might plan and develop art instructional activities consistent with the model. Based upon a social studies model designed along the lines of Robert Gagne's learning theory, the art education model utilizes rule, concept,…

Findings from fieldwork analyzing children's use of four interactive multimedia programs are compared with a description of early film features and used as the basis to consider problems faced by an audience encountering a nascent medium. Methods adopted to facilitate understanding of films and their suitability for adaptation to multimedia…