Describes the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) production model, a general process model utilized in the production of "Sesame Street" and all other CTW productions. The model's assumptions are explicated and its effectiveness is assessed using Scriven's logic of evaluation. (MBR)

Considers how definitions of teaching and learning have informed educational broadcasters' rationales for their work and how these are manifested in the textual strategies of specific programs. A theoretical framework for accounting for the ways educational television seeks to implicate its viewers in the learning process is then developed. (RP)

Reviews literature on pronutrition messages in children's commercials and describes a study involving children ages 3 to 14 to test the effectiveness of incorporating health information disclosures into actual television commercials for highly sugared cereal and candy products. Results indicate most children were able to recall and make sense of…

Reactions of 50 2-year-old and 46 4-year-old Japanese children to selected experimental television programs were examined in two studies. The child was placed with his or her mother in a room where the experimental program was shown on one television and a fast-moving animation without sound was shown on a second television as a distractor. The…

An ongoing project has been established to (1) summarize and disseminate results of research on children and television to the creative community responsible for commercial and educational children's television, and (2) defuse the issues that have created a rift between this community and the academic community. The research efforts discussed in…

Examines modality differences in preschoolers' ability to recognize or recall temporally related events and extends Ward and Wackman's model by evaluating whether the assumed "visual viewing style" applies to preschoolers' processing of temporal relations. Results demonstrated that temporally related events were remembered more…

Measures children's attention to television programs varying in pace and continuity and assesses recall of the temporal sequence of program events. Attention and comprehension covaried more in animated than in live shows. Age, continuity, and pace effects on recall were not fully accounted for by their effects on attention. (Author/AS)

Children from grades one through six judged commercially produced advertisements, specially produced "pseudocommercials," and verbal descriptions as better suited to advertise a feminine or masculine sex-typed toy. Comprehension of sex-typed connotations was predicted by home television viewing patterns but not by general knowledge of sex…

Reviews research into children's use of television and discusses two studies, one from the United States and one from West Germany, that focus on media in families. A study currently being completed is also described that examines the effect of cable television on children's and adolescents' media use in Austria. (LRW)

Describes a 1981 study that compared uses of U.S. television by foreign children residing in the United States and American children in light of theories of acculturation, cultivation, and uses and gratifications. Children's television viewing is discussed, research methodology is described, and results are analyzed. (22 references) (Author/LRW)

Recognizing that some of the lessons educational television teaches children are cultural--how to be members of their own cultural group, for example, or what other cultural groups are like--a study developed qualitative methods for the formative evaluation of the accuracy of an educational television program's cultural content with respect to the…

This update of a bibliography published in Canadian Journal of Educational Communication (Fall 1982; Winter 1983) cites qualitative research seeking a more comprehensive, contextual account of children's television viewing. Specific items deal with viewing time, family role, habit modification, fright reaction, commercials, affective and language…

Dialog features--communication flow, language structures, and meaning/content--and nonverbal formal features of six children's television programs are examined to determine if there is dialog simplification, if certain dialog characteristics differentiate among shows sampled, and if there are different combinations of linguistic features and…

In Japan, the production and broadcasting of television (TV) programs for children began in 1953. After the first few years of trial and error, children's programs gradually rose in popularity with the introduction of TV animation, dramas, special-effects photography, music/variety and quiz shows, comedies, and action dramas. Since the inception…

This discussion of opportunities for gifted children offered by television watching focuses on the role television can play in their intellectual and social development. Topics discussed include implications for parents, educators, and researchers; children's perceived reality of television content; and television as an educational device. (MBR)