Research on incidental learning by children from television is both a cause and effect of the increasing attention being given by social and behavioral scientists to the influence of mass media. Laboratory-type experiments and data collected from everyday life are consistent in their findings, providing convincing evidence that television can influence the immediate behavior of children. When this altered behavior is carried over into social interaction, the foundation is established for more far-reaching influence. Television also has varied cognitive and attitudinal effects on children, e.g., it is their principal source of information on public affairs. Television designed to convey information can be quite effective, and entertainment programs occasionally provide instruction, but their impact is sometimes limited by redundancy with one another. Commercials also instruct children by influencing preferences for the value placed upon products. Tastes and preferences in programming and time spent with the medium change along with individual interests and needs as young people grow older. The study of television's influence requires both laboratory-type experimentation and the collection of data from real life, the former to establish the possibility of causation and the latter to confirm the presence in real life of experimental findings. (Author)