Repetition Increases Children's Comprehension of Television Content—Up to a Point

Mares, Marie‐Louise

doi:10.1080/03637750600693464

Cited by 24 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This speaks to the potential value of supplemental conclusions as a tool for bringing the intended message to the foreground so that audience members can catch it. The finding also corroborates research on developmental psychology and narrative comprehension, as well as non-narrative persuasion, which has demonstrated that explicit messages about subtextual messages can enhance people's understanding of the subtext (Collins et al, 1981;Hovland & Mandell, 1952;Mares, 2006Mares, , 2007. But it also raises a question that has been broached before: without a supplemental conclusion, are some audience members at risk of missing the underlying message entirely (Kreuter et al, 2007)?…”

Section: Theoretical Implicationssupporting

confidence: 70%

“…For instance, research on developmental differences in narrative comprehension has found that due to constraints on cognitive capacity, both children and older adults can have difficulty drawing inferences from narrative events to gauge details like character emotions and motivations. But these difficulties can be overcome if audience members are repeatedly exposed to the message or given explicit message commentary while viewing (e.g., Collins, Sobol, & Westby, 1981;Mares, 2006Mares, , 2007. Evidence suggests that explicit commentary about a story's subtext can also enhance persuasion.…”

Section: Supplemental Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring Subtext Processing in Narrative Persuasion: The Role of Eudaimonic Entertainment-Use Motivation and a Supplemental Conclusion Scene

Cohen

2016

Communication Quarterly

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This study sought to expand current narrative persuasion models by examining the role of subtext processing. The extended elaboration likelihood model suggests that transportation leads to persuasion by reducing counterarguments to stories' persuasive subtexts. The model implicitly argues that transportation should reduce total subtext processing, including counterarguments and intended elaboration. But this study reasoned that people with stronger eudaimonic motivation to have meaningful entertainment experiences, would put more effort into processing stories' subtexts while engaging with the narrative. Because less eudaimonically motivated individuals may be at risk for missing the subtext, it was also expected that adding a supplemental conclusion scene that reiterates the intended message would facilitate persuasion.Following a pre-test survey, 201 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to view an episode of the crime drama Numb3rs: one of two versions of "Harvest," designed to promote organ donation (with or without a conclusion scene), or a control episode. After viewing, participants completed a thought-listing task and second survey.Results show that "Harvest" did not result in persuasive outcomes related to organ donation. Transportation was a marginally significant positive predictor of total subtext processing. Contrary to predictions, eudaimonic motivation negatively predicted amount of total subtext processing.Eudaimonic motivation also negatively (but marginally) predicted doctor mistrust, but this effect was moderated by conclusion condition: eudaimonic motivation was negatively associated with doctor mistrust only in the no conclusion condition. Eudaimonic motivation was also negatively (but marginally) associated with intended elaboration. Further examination showed that, compared to people with low eudaimonic motivation, those with high eudaimonic motivation were less likely to engage in intended elaboration, but only in the no conclusion condition. This pattern of findings provides indirect evidence that intended elaboration was responsible for decreasing doctor mistrust among people with high eudaimonic motivation who saw the conclusion. But surprisingly, intended elaboration was not directly related to any persuasive outcomes.The findings tentatively suggest that transportation and subtext processing can coexist and that eudaimonic motivation can affect the extent to which viewers engage in subtext processing during narrative engagement. The results also indicate that supplemental conclusions may be useful tools for narrative persuasion. Nobody has influenced my development as a scholar more than Cindy Hoffner. Her research and teaching inspired me, and her mentorship gave me the skills, professional socialization, and confidence to become an independent scholar. This dissertation is a direct product of her hours of dedication, her firm guidance, her unrelenting patience, and her unwavering faith in me. I hope that I one day have the opportunity to be half as good a mentor to ...

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Section: Theoretical Implicationssupporting

confidence: 70%

Section: Supplemental Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Subtext Processing in Narrative Persuasion: The Role of Eudaimonic Entertainment-Use Motivation and a Supplemental Conclusion Scene

Cohen

2016

Communication Quarterly

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“…He argued that part of young children's difficulty in extracting the gist of televised stories is that they tend to forget the main character's superordinate goal, even though this goal typically serves as the narrative glue that binds the events of the story together (Van den Broek, 1997;van den Broek, Lynch, Naslund, Ievers-Landis, & Verduin, 2003). Not surprisingly then, Mares (2006) found that when 6-to 8-year-old children were asked to generate the moral lessons of the Disney animated film, The Sword in the Stone, very few did so correctly. Most children either repeated a part of the story or repeated a familiar but irrelevant moral principle.…”

Section: More General Difficulties Extracting the Gist Of Televised Smentioning

confidence: 97%

Be Kind to Three-Legged Dogs: Children's Literal Interpretations of TV's Moral Lessons

Mares

Acosta

2008

Media Psychology

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“…Because these aspects will be somewhat familiar when the story is read again, attentional demands will be a little lower, allowing the child to focus on other aspects of the story (see also, Leavitt and Christenfeld, 2011). That is, repetition may help draw children's attention from highly salient aspects of the storybook to smaller details including new words (see also, Crawley et al, 1999; Mares, 2006; Perrachione et al, 2011, for similar arguments in other domains). This contextual repetition account also explains McLeod and McDade's (2011) findings.…”

Section: Context and Repetition In Word Learning Via Storybooksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context and repetition in word learning

Horst¹

2013

Front. Psychol.

101

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Young children learn words from a variety of situations, including shared storybook reading. A recent study by Horst et al. (2011a) demonstrates that children learned more new words during shared storybook reading if they were read the same stories repeatedly than if they were read different stories that had the same number of target words. The current paper reviews this study and further examines the effect of contextual repetition on children's word learning in both shared storybook reading and other situations, including fast mapping by mutual exclusivity. The studies reviewed here suggest that the same cognitive mechanisms support word learning in a variety of situations. Both practical considerations for experimental design and directions for future research are discussed.

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Repetition Increases Children's Comprehension of Television Content—Up to a Point

Cited by 24 publications

References 33 publications

Exploring Subtext Processing in Narrative Persuasion: The Role of Eudaimonic Entertainment-Use Motivation and a Supplemental Conclusion Scene

Exploring Subtext Processing in Narrative Persuasion: The Role of Eudaimonic Entertainment-Use Motivation and a Supplemental Conclusion Scene

Be Kind to Three-Legged Dogs: Children's Literal Interpretations of TV's Moral Lessons

Context and repetition in word learning

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