Age-Related Aspects of Comprehension and Inference from a Televised Dramatic Narrative

Collins, W. Andrew; Wellman, Henry M.; Keniston, Allen H.; Westby, Sally D.

doi:10.2307/1128703

Cited by 154 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…As a result of the focus on linguistic materials, these studies typically have contributed little information about story comprehension in children younger than elementary school age. By employing the medium of television, we can present information via both auditory and visual modalities, making the presentation less exclusively linguistic (see Collins et al, 1978;Meringoff et al, 1983;Pezdek, Lehrer, & Simon, 1984). This allows us to extend the prior work to children of a younger age and thereby obtain a more complete picture of the development of story comprehension.…”

Section: Van Den Broek Lorch and Thurlow 3015mentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's and Adults' Memory for Television Stories: The Role of Causal Factors, Story-Grammar Categories, and Hierarchical Level

Broek¹,

Lorch²,

Thurlow³

1996

Child Development

133

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What events from televised stories do preschool children and adults remember? In this study, we examined the extent to which 4-year-old and 6-year-old children's and adults' free recall of events from "Sesame Street" stories is determined by the role the events play in the story structure. Events varied with respect to 4 structural properties: number of causal connections, status on or off the story's causal chain, story-grammar category, and position in the story's hierarchical structure. There were systematic developmental differences in the effects of these properties on recall. First, memory at all ages was strongly influenced by the 2 causal factors, but effects of these factors increased with age. Second, children emphasized actions in their recall, whereas adults most frequently recalled protagonists' goals and events that initiated these goals. Third, children's recall increased as the hierarchical level of events increased, whereas adults most frequently recalled (causally more important) events at intermediate levels. These findings demonstrate that preschool children are already sensitive to structural features of televised narratives but that utilization of the causal-motivational structure of narratives increases systematically with age.

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Section: Van Den Broek Lorch and Thurlow 3015mentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's and Adults' Memory for Television Stories: The Role of Causal Factors, Story-Grammar Categories, and Hierarchical Level

Broek¹,

Lorch²,

Thurlow³

1996

Child Development

133

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A narrative comprehension assessment was created to evaluate how much central content (i.e., that which is central to the plot) participants were able to understand and recall from the stimulus episode (Collins, Wellman, Keniston, & Westby, 1978). In order to develop an initial list of questions, one of the researchers viewed the episode and drafted as many items as possible corresponding to plot events throughout the episode.…”

Section: Assessments and Measures: Dependent Variables Narrative Compmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to develop an initial list of questions, one of the researchers viewed the episode and drafted as many items as possible corresponding to plot events throughout the episode. Similar to procedures developed by Collins et al (1978), 10 adult judges viewed the program episode and were asked to rate whether they felt the questions assessed central, incidental, or inferential content. Questions that were rated as central content with a minimum agreement of 80% across judges were eligible for inclusion.…”

Section: Assessments and Measures: Dependent Variables Narrative Compmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Preschoolers Bring to the Show: The Relation Between Viewer Characteristics and Children’s Learning from Educational Television

Aladé

Nathanson

2016

Media Psychology

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“…First, the focus here was on children's first impressions of unfamiliar people as a function of language and behaviour. Second, children's understanding of television plots changes with cognitive development (Collins, Wellman, Keniston, & Westby, 1978;Low & Durkin, 1998;Palmer & MacNeil, 1991), and we aimed to minimize additional processing demands. The videos were recorded by an experienced camera operator and edited on professional standard equipment by an experienced producer.…”

Section: Stimulus Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of language and social behaviour on children's reactions to foreign people in television

Durkin

Judge

2001

British J of Dev Psycho

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This study investigated children's reactions to people speaking a foreign language on television in either prosocial or antisocial representations. It was predicted that prejudice would be greatest in the condition in which the targets were shown speaking a foreign language and behaving in an antisocial manner, and that this would be most marked in younger children. Participants aged 6, 8 or 10 years viewed short programmes in which the same family appeared as English-speaking or foreign-speaking, prosocial or antisocial. The language was created for this study, circumventing the possibility of pre-existing biases affecting responses. Children completed three prejudice measures. The results indicated bias against foreign speakers in the 6- and 8-year-old groups, but not in the 10-year-olds. The findings are discussed in relation to developmental changes in prejudice and implications for media portrayals

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Age-Related Aspects of Comprehension and Inference from a Televised Dramatic Narrative

Cited by 154 publications

References 28 publications

Children's and Adults' Memory for Television Stories: The Role of Causal Factors, Story-Grammar Categories, and Hierarchical Level

Children's and Adults' Memory for Television Stories: The Role of Causal Factors, Story-Grammar Categories, and Hierarchical Level

What Preschoolers Bring to the Show: The Relation Between Viewer Characteristics and Children’s Learning from Educational Television

Effects of language and social behaviour on children's reactions to foreign people in television

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