Do Children Learn How to Watch Television? The Impact of Extensive Experience With Blue's Clues on Preschool Children's Television Viewing Behavior

Abstract

This is, we believe, the first investigation of the effects of experience with a particular program series on children's subsequent television viewing behavior and comprehension. Three-to 5-year-old, regular, experienced Blue's Clues viewers were compared to new, inexperienced viewers. In Study 1, experienced Blue's Clues viewers looked less but overtly interacted more with a new episode of Blue's Clues. This effect was most pronounced during recurrent format portions of the episode. They also showed greater comprehension of familiar content. Study 2 compared experienced and inexperienced viewers on viewing behavior and comprehension of an episode of a different series. Experienced Blue's Clues viewers looked less but overtly interacted more; there were no differences in comprehension. These results suggest that a television series can teach children a style of television viewing transferable to new episodes and to new series.

Toward a Redefinition of “Educational” in Babies’ and Toddlers’ Media:Overt Visual Attention, Verbalization, and Other Measures of Engagement as Indicators of Learning

“…Crawley and colleagues [17] noted that over repeated viewings of Blue's Clues, both verbal and nonverbal overt interactions with the program increased, which lead them to support the notion that vicarious participation is more likely to occur when a child has an understanding of the content. If we extend that argument to the present study, it would indicate that any child displaying overt behaviors directed at the Brainy Baby DVD had mastered the content to some degree.…”

“…However, the present study may have isolated verbal and nonverbal indicators of some form of cognitive processing while viewing. As Sproull [16] and Crawley et al [17] noted, direct reactions to program content on-screen are indicators of "vicarious participation," and in order to participate in such a manner a child must have some rudimentary understanding or comprehension of the material presented. In essence, children who exhibit verbal and nonverbal indicators of participation are engaged with the content.…”

“…More recently, Crawley, Anderson, Santomero, Wilder, Williams, Evans, and Bryant [17] explained children are strategic in deploying attention to television; they use learned features of television programs to guide their attention. In their study of the preschool program Blue's Clues, Crawley et al determined that over repeated viewings of an episode, both verbal and nonverbal overt interactions with the educational content increased.…”

“…As the data from this project is further analyzed for a future study, in the tradition of Crawley et al [17], an examination of overt behaviors over repeated viewings of the DVD is crucial. If indeed a child's verbal and nonverbal behaviors increase with each viewing, the argument that overt program interaction is a reflection, rather than a cause, of learning will be even more strongly supported.…”

Instructional/Developmental Communication: Current Theory, Research, and Future Trends

“…Other research topics investigated by developmental communication scholars have included the effect of a child's age on his or her interpretation of an act of interpersonal violence on television (Krcmar & Cooke, 2001), the program characteristics children value on television (Valkenburg & Janssen, 1999), children's cognitive and emotional responses to negative emotions in family-formatted situation comedies (Weiss & Wilson, 1998), family communication patterns and parentchild discourse (Krcmar, 1996), effects of talk show viewing on adolescents (Davis & Mares, 1998), and the effects of extensive experience on children's television viewing (Crawley et al, 2002), to name a few.…”