THE DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE OF CHILDREN'S PERCEPTIONS OF TELEVISION CHARACTERS: A REPLICATION

This study was an attempt to replicate and extend the findings of previous research which explored the cognitive dimensions used by children to differentiate television characters. Results indicate that humor remains the primary attribute that children use to differentiate television characters, although this characteristic does not seem to be important in children's modeling decisions. Attractiveness and activity remain secondary attributes but also discriminate between male and female children in predicting identification with the characters. These findings are similar to those of the original study. Sex represents an additional important attribute for both sexes in differentiating the characters but is important only for female decisions about which characters are appropriate role models.     

PRESCHOOL CHILDREN'S VISUAL ATTENTION TO ATTRIBUTES OF TELEVISION

Preschool children's visual attention to nearly three hours of a heterogeneous sample of children's programing was examined in relationship to the presence of 37 simple visual and auditory attributes of television programs. A factor analysis of the attributes indicated that they were largely independent, with the exception of two factors, which were labeled “women and children” and “puppets.” Attributes and factors that were positively related to attention were the puppet factor, women and children factor, auditory changes, peculiar voices, movement, cuts, sound effects, laughter, and applause. Attributes that were negatively related to attention were adult male voices, extended zooms and pans, eye contact, and still shots. Other attributes had both positive and negative effects on attention depending on whether the child was looking at the TV at the time the attribute occurred. It is suggested that attributes are positive or negative to the degree to which they signal informative comprehensible content.     

CHILDREN'S PERCEPTIONS OF CHANGES IN SIZE OF TELEVISED IMAGES

Using a Piagétan perspective, this study investigated the ways in which elementary school children perceive changes in the size of a televised image (in this case, a candy bar). The findings suggest that younger children perceive changes in image size from a medium shot to a close-up as changes in the object itself. Children's responses to changes in the televised image parallel their responses to traditional conservation tasks, but conservation of televised images occurs at a later age. In addition, children appear to use different cognitive skills to interpret how a zoom or a cut transforms the size of a televised image. When a zoom is used, children more readily perceive the object as “growing larger.”     

THE EFFECT OF TELEVISION AND RADIO ON CHILDREN'S CREATIVITY

The literature on creativity posits that creative abilities are stable and relatively impervious to short-term interventions. Several studies have, however, reported differential effects of media on children's imaginative play and thinking. The results of these studies are difficult to interpret owing to their reliance on nonstandardized measures of creativity. The present study examines the relative effects of television versus radio on children's creativity. Third and sixth graders were presented a story on television or radio and were then given an adapted version of the “Just Suppose” test of divergent thinking developed by Torrance (1974). Responses were scored in terms of ideational fluency, flexibility, and originality. The results indicated that the two media did not have a differential effect on children's creativity.     

ADOLESCENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL CONFLICTS IN TELEVISION NEWS AND SOCIAL REALITY

This study examined Israeli adolescents' differential perception of social conflicts in society and of their presentation by TV news, given the assumption that TV presents a distorted picture of real social conflicts along three dimensions: complexity, intensity, and solvability. It was hypothesized that age and degree of remoteness of social conflicts from one's life experiences will account for the main differences in an adolescent's differential perception of social conflicts. The sample consisted of 492 9th-grade and 425 12lh-grade Israeli adolescents. The data indicate that the older adolescents typically differentiate between the two realms of reality to a greater degree than do the younger adolescents. This is the case for three conflicts (school integration, labor disputes, and political terrorism) across the three dimensions. Moreover, the highest degree of differentiation between the two realms of reality was found for both age groups in the school integration conflict, with which the respondents were presumed to be most familiar, and the least differentiation for the conflict concerning political terrorism, with which they were presumed to have had the least experience.     

VISUAL COMPLEXITY AND YOUNG CHILDREN'S LEARNING FROM TELEVISION

The impact of both the static and dynamic visual complexity of a half-hour sequence of “Sesame Street” segments upon viewers' visual attention, recall, and recognition are assessed in this study of 48 four and five year olds. Previous research has produced inconsistent results with respect to the links among the three sets of variables in this observational learning process. Results of a path analysis indicated strong negative relationships between static complexity and all three viewer variables, positive relationships between dynamic complexity and both attention and recognition, and between attention and both types of learning. No significant relationship emerged between dynamic complexity and recall. Implications for television production aimed at young children are discussed.     

CHILDREN'S PERSON PERCEPTION: THE GENERALIZATION FROM TELEVISION PEOPLE TO REAL PEOPLE

This study investigated children's perceptions of television people and the extent to which these perceptions are generalized to impressions of peers. Elementary school children (W=172) completed questionnaires measuring viewing, knowledge of, identification with, and the perceived reality of television characters, and ratings of peers on 11 traits (e.g., funny, attractive, kind, nice). Two criterion variables were studied: children's mean rating of peers on each of the traits and the variance in the ratings of peers on each trait. Multiple regression analyses (controlling for grade and sex) revealed that: (1) identification with television characters was a significant predictor of the mean evaluation of peers on the traits; (2) television viewing was a significant predictor of the variance in children's ratings of peers; and (3) the relationship between television viewing and the variance in trait ratings was lower for attributes found in past studies to be suggested by television presentations. Implications of these findings for the traditional concern that television standardizes perceptions of people through stereotyping are considered.     

THE EVALUATION OF CHILDREN'S PLAY MATERIALS1

Although reliable data concerning toys' safety, durability, and appeal to children would be useful to parents, educators, and toy manufacturers, systematic procedures for evaluating toys and collecting such data have not been readily available. This paper describes a technology for carrying out such evaluations with children in free-play settings. Children entering the toy-evaluation area were each given a large tag, coded to indicate their names, age, and sex, to wear on the back of their shirt. Twenty-five toys were initially displayed on a table. Children were required by an adult to check out, and later return, any toy they selected for play. Every 5 min, an observer wrote down the tag number of any child playing with each of the 25 toys. The area was open for several hours daily, and at the end of each day a supervisor completed a toy-use questionnaire that identified problems associated with toy management, safety, and durability. Each interval in which a child was recorded as playing with a toy was considered five child-minutes of use for that toy. Data were summarized after each 5- to 10-day toy evaluation to indicate the total number of child-minutes of use attributed to each of the toys tested. The toys were then ranked from the most- to least-used. This measure of toys' overall use proved to be a reliable predictor of toys' appeal across many subjects and settings, and correlated well with our other analyses of toys' use. For example, toys used by individual children for long periods of time, and those toys most often chosen from the toy table were frequently the same toys that ranked high in overall child-minutes of use. Reliable differences in toys' appeal to boys and girls of different ages were observed. To test the generality of the toy-evaluation procedures, several experiments were conducted. To find out whether the popularity of certain toys depended on the number of children playing, a series of popular toys was made available first to only a single child at a time, then to any number of children. While certain toys required the presence of two or more children before they would be used, most toys were used by children both alone and in groups. The popularity of most toys, even the least-used toys, could be increased by having an adult play alone with the children. With some toys, an adult could maintain the play of several children at a time; with other toys, only one child at a time would be engaged. Another study showed a prolonged period of enforced sampling with little-used toys almost never increased their subsequent use once the enforced sampling procedures were discontinued. Finally, we found that having multiple copies of the same popular toys did not produce much more use of the toys than having single copies. The data produced by these evaluation procedures could be helpful to parents and educators in selecting desirable toys, and to manufacturers in improving the toys they develop and market. Future research might involve developing procedures that would encourage concerned adults to carry out toy evaluations in their own communities.     

CULTURE AND CHILDREN'S UNDERSTANDING OF GEOMETRY1

A 358 enfants, appartenant à deux régions du district d'Ankole en Ouganda, on fait passer les épreuves de type Piaget pour la conservation des longueurs, la copie d'angle et la localisation d'un point sur une feuille rectangulaire. Parmi ces enfants dont L'âge est en général compris entre 6 et 11 ans, il y a des scolarisés et des non scolarisés. Les résultats montrent qu'il y a, parmi les scolarisés, une proportion significativement plus importante d'enfants qui réussissent L'épreuve de conservation des longueurs, et qui réalisent également une meilleure performance dans L'épreuve de copie d'angle. Il n'y a cependant aucune différence entre les deux groupes dans L'épreuve de localisation d'un point. L'auteur discute de L'importance de la scolarisation et de L'expérience culturelle dans le développement de certains concepts géométriques.     

PERCEPTIONS OF INFORMATION SEQUENCING IN RELATIONSHIP DEVELOPMENT1

Randomly selected adult residents (N = 204) of a Chicago suburb sorted 150 statements along a time continuum according to their estimate of when each statement would first be made during a two-hour conversation between two strangers. Analyses were conducted on the items employing the following variables: self-esteem, birth order, number of close friends, economic status, desired number of friends, age, sex, and education. Only the latter four variables produced significant differences.     

AN EXAMINATION OF THREE MODELS OF TELEVISION VIEWING AND AGGRESSION1

Three general models of the relationship between television viewing and aggressiveness are described: the Facilitation Model, featuring learning or legitimization of aggression from television violence; the Catharsis Model, or the reduction of innate aggressive drives through vicarious participation in television violence; and the Arousal Model, which considers television programming as an agent of arousal, generating a drive toward activity, with the nature of the activity determined by situational factors. The Arousal Model is further discriminated into an Emotional Arousal Model, in which the agent of arousal is emotional reaction to violent content, and the Form Arousal Model, in which arousal is a result of the cognitive effort involved in decoding programming. The Facilitation, Catharsis, and Form Arousal Models are contrasted on a sample of 597 adolescents. The results indicate independent Facilitation and Form Arousal processes occur. A rather startling result is the finding that levels of aggressiveness can be predicted as well by examining only the form of programming as they can by examining only the violent content. Age and sex differences are associated with different strengths of Facilitation and/or Form Arousal effects, indicating possible socialization or maturation processes affecting the response of adolescents to programming.     

PERCEPTIONS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Two hundred eight faculty members and 314 graduate students located at a West Coast university were presented with 24 brief situations describing five types of sexual harassment in a university setting: gender harassment, seductive behavior, sexual bribery, sexual coercion, and sexual imposition or assault. The participants were randomly assigned to rate the situations under one of four instructional conditions that described combinations of the level of the student and authority of the faculty portrayed in the brief vignettes. Women were more likely than neither the target student's level (i.e., graduate or undergraduate) nor the degree of the faculty member's power over her affected the participants' ratings of the situations. The results indicated that, with the exception of the more coercive and intrusive behaviors, considerable uncertainty may still exist about what constitutes sexual harassment within the university setting.     

JAPANESE PERCEPTIONS OF MOTHERHOOD

Differences in Japanese attitudes toward motherhood were investigated using Hare-Mustin and Broderick's (1979) Motherhood Inventory (MI), administered to 157 male and 85 female university students and 72 mothers. Factor analyses revealed distinctive profiles for each group. Male students believed that motherhood was appropriate and natural for women and were content to let women operate independently within this role. Mothers emphasized that women's greatest fulfillment was associated with mothering. Female university students recognized the importance of and the hard work involved in mothering, but were less likely to perceive it as the primary source of women's fulfillment. Comparisons of group means on MI items revealed that university women held the least conventional views. Further research is needed to determine whether their attitudes about female gender roles reflect a general trend within this cohort of women or transitory responses related to stage in the life cycle.     

PERCEPTIONS OF WIFE ABUSE

The effects of 157 university students'gender, attitudes toward women (Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1973), and just-world beliefs (Lerner, 1980) on their perceptions and attributions regarding the perpetrator and victim of an instance of wife abuse were examined. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed two patterns of results, each differentially associated with participants'gender. Consistent with Heider's (1958) balance theory, males blamed and derogated the wife/victim more as their attitudes toward women became less favorable. Among females, in contrast, those with positive attitudes toward women blamed, but did not derogate, the wife/victim more as their just-world beliefs became stronger. The latter finding is interpreted in view of research which suggests that women may blame a victim of violence toward women in an effort to gain perceived control over the possibility of their own potential victimization. The implications of these findings for understanding and changing people's perceptions of the victims of wife abuse are discussed.     

儿童运动视觉表象操作水平的发展及影响因素

采用计算机软件控制实验,以暴露运动一段行程后进入遮蔽的光点为刺激物,光点以三种不同运动速度、三种不同运动行距组合呈现,要求儿童判断光点到达目标位置时按键反应。结果表明：5—19岁儿童运动视觉表象操作水平的发展存在5一8岁、11—14岁两个加速期;客体运动速度对运动视觉表象操作绩效有显著影响,5、8、11岁组快速较中速下．5．8岁组中速较慢速下操作准确性均有显著降低;客体运动行距对运动视觉表象操作绩效也有显著的影响．5、8、11岁组右目标位置下较中目标位置下操作准确性显著降低;性别对运动视觉表象操作水平无显著影响。     

THE SOCIAL USES OF TELEVISION

Building from the social constructivist view, this paper provides evidence that audience members create specific and sometimes elaborate practical actions involving television in order to gratify particular needs in the context of family viewing. The ethnography of mass communication is recommended as a methodological framework suitable for discovering and documenting these behaviors. Based on findings from systematic participant observation research, and from the pertinent uses and gratifications literature, a typology of the social uses of television, with emphasis on their communicative value, is presented. Mass media are found to be valuable social resources, not unlike language or the occasions for talk, which are particularly useful to the imaginative social member for the construction and maintenance of desired relations at home.     

MEDICAL PERCEPTIONS OF MENOPAUSAL SYMPTOMS

Thirty-five physicians in family practice or gynecology, 43 practicing nurses, and 35 menopausal or postmenopausal women rated the frequency, severity, and causality of 15 menopausal symptoms commonly reported in the literature. Subjects also rated their degree of preference for four possible menopause treatments (counseling, estrogen therapy, mood-altering medication, and no treatment) and answered an open-ended question asking them what they saw as the major factor in determining whether a woman would experience difficulty at menopause. The results overall suggest that medical persons see menopausal symptoms as more pathological than women who have experienced or are experiencing menopause and that physicians, relative to menopausal women, adhere to a more psychogenic model in which psychological causality and symptoms are given greater emphasis than menopausal women give them.