Several current television series for preschool children convey stories, not through meaningful dialogue, but through visual information and intonational cues embedded within nonsensical dialogue. This study examined young children's ability to construct meaning from such materials. Participating were 135 preschoolers, 3 to 5 years old. Subjects…

A study was conducted to (1) examine children's visual and auditory attention to, and comprehension of, narrated and nonnarrated versions of two television programs, and (2) test a measure of auditory attention in relation to visual attention and to comprehension of information presented with or without narration. Subjects, 117 five- and…

Visual processing of televised information was compared among 85 Japanese and 111 American boys and girls at the kindergarten and 4th-grade levels. The literatures on cognition and learning indicate that language and child rearing factors are more conducive to the development of iconic processing skills in Japanese children than in American…

Noting that both the structural characteristics of television and the characteristics of the viewer may influence comprehension of television news, a study tested the hypothesis that the synchronous presentation of television news will maximize learning for viewers with low prior knowledge of program content. Synchronous and nonsynchronous…