The efficacy of inoculation theory has been confirmed by decades of empirical research, yet optimizing its effectiveness remains a vibrant line of investigation. The present research turns to psychological reactance theory for a means of enhancing the core mechanisms of inoculation--threat and refutational preemption. Findings from a multisite…

Objectives: The primary purpose of this research is to understand the media's impact on individual attitudes and behaviors related to aggression, sexuality, and body image. This research is of particular importance because it uses up-to-date data reflecting effects based on the current media environment. Additionally, it includes a racially…

Early child development is influenced by various genetic and environmental factors. This study aims to identify factors that affect the phonological awareness of preschool and first grade children. Based on a sample of 330 German-speaking children (mean age = 6.2 years) the following domains were evaluated: Parent factors, birth and pregnancy,…

Infants can imitate a novel action sequence from television and picture books, yet there has been no direct comparison of infants' imitation from the 2 types of media. Varying the narrative cues available during the demonstration and test, the current experiments measured 18- and 24-month-olds' imitation from television and picture books. Infants…

This study compared the amount and style of maternal communication with toddlers and preschoolers while mother-child pairs watched TV, read books, and played with toys. We found that mother-child communication was less frequent and less verbally responsive when dyads viewed TV compared with when they read books, and in many cases, when they played…

A report for the British Library concluded that despite access to information provided by contemporary technology, there had been no increase in the information literacy of students. Major publications from the National Middle School Association, including "This We Believe" and "From Rhetoric to Reality," recognize that the mass media is a…

Educational TV has been consistently linked to children's learning. In this research, educational TV characteristics were identified, coded, and tested for their influence on children's program-specific comprehension and vocabulary outcomes. Study 1 details a content analysis of TV features including a program's macrostructure (i.e., narrative or…

In knowing hands, public-media resources can help young children growing up in socially and economically disadvantaged circumstances become better prepared to succeed in school. This vision, which has held steady since the original authorizing legislation for the program was written, continues to guide the work of the Corporation for Public…

The Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is administered by the Montana Office of Public Instruction every two years to students in grades 7 through 12. The purpose of the survey is to help monitor the prevalence of behaviors that not only influence youth health, but also put youth at risk for the most significant health and social problems…

Research on adolescents' use of sexual media has been dominated by a variable-oriented perspective, focusing on incremental effects of media exposure on sexual behavior. The present investigation examines the ways in which adolescents select and organize their television viewing. This study used cluster analysis to identify, validate, and describe…

John Pulley begins this article by sharing the story of Richard Quiroga, a shining example of what can happen when an at-risk student in an economically disadvantaged region gets the right training at the right time. As a young man, Quiroga was living on his own and at risk of getting sucked into the whirlpool of poverty and despair that often…

TV shows, especially soap operas and sitcoms, are usually considered by ESL practitioners as a source of authentic spoken conversational materials presumably because they reflect the linguistic features of natural conversation. However, practitioners might be faced with the dilemma of how to evaluate whether such conversational materials reflect…

Television shows, especially soap operas and sitcoms, are usually considered by English as a second language practitioners as a source of authentic spoken conversational materials presumably because they reflect the linguistic features of natural conversation. However, practitioners are faced with the dilemma of how to assess whether such…

Children and adolescents spent a considerable portion of their time watching television, movies, playing videogames and on the internet. Media has proved to be a very useful tool in the fields of education, arts, science, sports, and culture. Over the past few decades, there has been a surge in the use of media by the younger generations and…

Vocabulary is an essential element of every second/foreign language teaching and learning program. While the goal of language teaching programs is to focus on explicit vocabulary teaching to promote learning, "materials which provide visual and aural input such as movies may be conducive to incidental vocabulary learning." (Webb and Rodgers, 2009,…