Videotapes of elementary school children watching a standard 15-minute television presentation were analyzed for attention to television, viewing patterns, and alternate activities. Recognition memory of auditory and visual content of the commercials and of the products was tested. Children's behavior during the program and during the commercials…

Effects of the importance of plot-relevant information on 4- to 6-year-old children's memory for four televised stories was examined in two experiments. Free recall and cued recall of idea units rated for importance by college students were assessed. Recognition following failed cued recall was also assessed. (Author/BN)

Second, fifth, and eighth graders viewed one of four edited versions of a commercial action-adventure television program that varied in number of scenes and in degree of organization. Both recognition and recall measures were used to assess children's memory for central content, peripheral content, and implicit content. (Author/JMB)

Third and sixth graders read an illustrated story and were presented with either a television or radio version of another story. Across a range of comprehension and memory measures, performance in the radio condition and reading were related, while performance in the television condition and reading were not. (Author/CB)

Asked children and adults to recall events from "Sesame Street." Found that subjects' memory was influenced by causal factors (number of causal relations to other events, place in the story's causal chain) and this influence increased with age; children recalled actions, whereas adults recalled protagonists' goals; and children's recall…

Assesses third-grade children's comprehension of traditional and nontraditional female sex-role portrayals in television programs. For both programs, children demonstrated accurate memory for role-relevant information, but children with higher levels of sex-role stereotyping remembered less role-relevant information than did children with lower…