NATHAN, JOHN G. Television Viewing at Home: Age Trends in Visual Attention and Time with TV'. .... representative of families that are generally willing to participate in ... the research center. ... telephone calls to schedule laboratory visitSj.
Television Viewing at Home: Age Trends in Visual Attention and Time with TV Daniel R. Anderson University of Massachusetts
Elizabeth Pugzles Lorch University of Kentucky
Diane E. Field, Patricia A. Collins, and John C. Nathan University of Massachusetts ANDERSON, DANIEL R.; LORCH, EUZABETH PUGZLES; FIELD, DIANE E.; GOLLINS, PATRICIA A.; and
NATHAN, JOHN G. Television Viewing at Home: Age Trends in Visual Attention and Time with TV'. GHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1986, 57, 1024-1033. The TV-viewing behavior of 99 families with young children was videotaped by automated time-lapse recording equipment placed in homes for 10-day periods. The 99 families comprised 460 individuals from infants to 62 years of age. Time-sample analyses of 4,672 hours of recordings indicated that the TV-viewing room contained no viewers 14.7% of the time that the TV was on. There were no age trends in time spent with television Percent visual attention to television increased greatly across the preschool years, leveled off at about 70% during the school-age years, and declined in adulthood. Men looked at the TV more than women. There were no significant correlations between time spent with TV and percent of visual attention to TV. The increase in visual attention to television during the preschool years is consistent with the theory that TV program comprehensibility is a major determinant of attention in young children.
Television is the most frequently used mass entertainment and information medium in contemporary American culture (e.g., see Comstock, ChaJEfee, Katzman, McCombs, & Roberts, 1978). Despite the prevalence of television use and despite its influence on individual social and cognitive development (see Comstock et al., 1978; Pearl, Bouthile, & Lazar, 1982), there has been remarkably little behavioral analysis of the development of television viewing itself In particular, there has been a lack of direct observation of TV viewing in homes. Research that examines the development of TV'viewing has primarily used questionnaire and diary methods or has used direct observation in laboratory contexts,
A few studies have employed direct observation in homes but have reported primarily qualitative results. Questionnaire and diary studies indicate that systematic viewing of television begins at about 2.5 years (Schramm, Lyle, & Parker, 1961), is at a high level during the preschool and early school-age years, declines somewhat during adolescence, and again reache.^ relatively high levels among the elderly (Comstock et al., 1978). According to one major commercial TV ratings service, during the 1980-81 viewing season, children aged 2-5 years viewed 27.8 hours per week, children aged 6-11 years viewed 24.3 hours per week,
This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, and the John and Mary Markle Foundation and by a Research Scientist Development Award from NIMH to the first author. We would like to acknowledge the assistance and advice of many people, including Laureen Beadle, Graig Bonner, Rex Bradford, Mariw Buckley, Gynthia Burger, Harold Byrd, Darlene Garlson, Peter Grown, Sharon Davenport Gatherine Fischer, Susan Hunter, Norma Lee, Elizabeth Moore-Shay, Lisa Newfield, Vivian Newman, Pearlie Pitts, Robin Smith, and Galeb Weissberg. We especially appreciate the participation ol the families without whom this work would not have been possible. Preliminary analyses of the data reported here were presented at the Society for Research in Ghild Development biennial meeting in Detroit, 1983, as well as in chapters by Anderson and Field (1983) and Anderson and Smiw (1984). Requests for reprints should be addressed to Daniel R. Anderson, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003. [Child r>evelopment. 1986, 57, 1024-1033. © 1986 by the Society for Research in Child Devekipnient, Inc. Allrightsreserved,0009-3920/86/5704-0018$01,00] -, t '
Anderson et al. and teens viewed 23.0 hours per week (Nielsen Television Index, 1981). Such paperand-pencil studies do not examine behavior while viewing and, in particular, do not indicate how much of that time is actually spent looking at TV. A number of investigations have observed TV-viewing behavior in laboratory situations. On-line observation of visual attention and other behaviors, as well as subsequent testing for comprehension or other effects, have been employed in such studies. Laboratory investigations have found that viewing behavior depends on the physical and social context of the viewing situation (Anderson, Lorch, Smith, Bradford, & Levin, 1981; Field & Anderson, 1985; Lorch, Anderson, & Levin, 1979; Sproull, 1973), on formal features and the comprehensibility of the program material (e.g., see Anderson & Levin, 1976; Anderson, Lorch, Field, & Sanders, 1981; Calvert, Huston, Watkins, & Wright, 1982), as well as numerous other programrelated variables (see Anderson & Field, 1983; Bryant, Zillmann, & Brown, 1983; Huston & Wright, 1983; Watt & Welch, 1983). Particularly relevant to the present paper are a number of laboratory studies that have shown a dramatic rise in visual attention to television in the years from 1 to 5 (Alwitt, .Anderson, Lorch, & Levin, 1980; Anderson & Levin, 1976; Anderson, Lorch, Smith, Bradford, & Levin, 1981). Age trends in visual attention over the school-age years, however, have been less thoroughly examined: one study (Calvert et al., 1982) found no age trend, and another (Field & Anderson, 1985) found an increase in visual attention from ages 5 to 9 years. Although there have been no published investigations of listening to television, it has been reported that recall of auditory material is strongly linked to looking in 5year-olds but less strongly linked in 9-yearolds (Field & Anderson, 1985). There have been no laboratory studies of age trends in adult TV-viewing behavior. The great increase in visual attention to TV from infancy to age 5 years, as found in laboratory studies, has been interpreted as reflecting an increase in the comprehensibility of the medium to these young children (Anderson & Lorch, 1983). Rather than visual attention being attracted and maintained by salient noncontent features such as visual change (see Singer, 1980), it is proposed that young children look at television because of their cognitive involvement with and active comprehension of the content. Comprehension should dramatically increase over the
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preschool years as a result of increasing receptive language skills, an expanded base of world knowledge, and increased skills specific to interpreting the television medium (see Anderson & Lorch, 1983; Anderson & Smith, 1984; Huston & Wright, 1983). As examples of medium-specific skills, Alwitt et al. (1980) provide evidence that auditory characteristics (such as specific voice qualities) are used by children to guide their visual attention to comprehensible portions of programming. Smith, Anderson, and Fischer (1985) find fairly good comprehension in 4-year-olds of cinematic montage that convey concepts of space, simultaneity of action, ellipsis, and character perspective, although comprehension further improves with age. Huston and Wright (1985) review research that indicates that comprehension of some cinematic devices (such as flashbacks) increases throughout the school-age years. Ceneral plot comprehension of adultlevel dramatic programming also increases throughout the school-age years (Collins, 1983). There has been little research on television viewing at home sufficient to determine whether such development in comprehension is associated with systematic changes in attention. The few studies that have directly examined TV viewing in homes have been sketchily described, with most of the findings reported in qualitative terms. The first major investigation was that of Allen (1965), who installed time-lapse film cameras in 95 homes in Oklahoma for 2 weeks during 1961, 1962, and 1963. Allen noted that inattention and activities concurrent with TV viewing were common. He found that no one was in the viewing room 19% of the time that the TV was on and that the least attentive viewers were preschool children. Allen (1965) provided few additional details about his findings, apparently because the data were used for commercial purposes. In a small observational study, Murray (1972) observed 27 5- and 6-year-old boys from poor families in Washington, DC. The study involved two observation sessions that lasted less than 1 hour each. He reported that amount and style of viewing varied widely across children and that visual attention averaged 62%. Bechtel, Achelpohl, and Akers (1972) installed real-time video equipment in 20 homes in Missouri for 6-day periods during 1970. As did Allen (1965), they found that viewers frequently engaged in activities other
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than watching television. Children aged 1—10 years averaged 52.0% visual attention, those aged 11-19 averaged 68.8%, and adults averaged 63.5%. There was no statistical analysis of these data, and age breakdowns were not sufficiently detailed to provide comparisons with laboratory research. As part of a longitudinal observational study in homes, Carew (1980) noted a dramatic rise in visual attention to television between ages 12 and 23 months. She provided little additional information. The present paper describes age trends in T^-viewing time and visual attention of children and adults videotaped in their homes for 10-day periods. Based on findings from laboratory studies, it is expected that visual attention would greatly increase throughout the preschool years, reflecting increasing comprehensibility of the medium as the child matures. The comprehensibility hypothesis mEikes a less strong prediction about attention in school-age children, since much of TV programming may be subjectively comprehensible at the level of individual scenes and units of dialogue, even though understanding of the overall plot may not be at adult levels (see Anderson, Lorch, Field, & Sanders, 1981; Anderson & Smith, 1984; Collins, 1983). There is relatively little basis on which to make predictions about overall adult visual attention relative to school-age children. Although TV should be fully comprehensible to adults, Anderson and Smith (1984) have speculated that adult viewers may develop overleamed strategies of TV viewing, allowing them to effectively engage in other activities concurrent with TV. A consequence would be lower visual attention to TV than that paid by children. Method Subjects The sample consisted of 99 families from the Springfield, Massachusetts, metropolitan area. These families, each of which had a 5year-old child, were a subset of a larger study of home TV viewing reported by Anderson, Field, Collins, Lorch, and Nathan (1985). In addition to the present group of families, the larger study included three other groups as controls for the effects of automated observation equipment on TV viewing. These control groups were not videotaped while watching television at home but varied according to whether they were informed of the video observation procedure and, if so, whether they agreed to have recording equipment placed in their homes. The four groups were com-
pared by Anderson et al. (1985) on a wide variety of measures including demographies, attitudes toward television, accuracy of viewing diaries, life stress, and postexperimental debriefing measures. No systematic differences appeared among those families with the cameras and those without. Thus, the families in the present study were considered representative of families that are generally willing to participate in research conceming television. The 99 families consisted of 460 individuals, including 270 children, ages 0—17 years, and 190 adults, ages 18—62 years. Table 1 indicates the number of subjects of each sex at each age. Different numbers of subjects were analyzed depending on the dependent variable and other procedural issues described below. The disproportionately large number of 5-year-olds reflects the fact that each family had a child near the fifth birthday. These 5year-olds received extensive testing and will be the subjects of subsequent reports. The high frequency of young adults and low frequency of teenagers and older adults are consequences of the families each having a 5year-old. The families that participated in the study were characteristically white, suburban, nuclear families from the three upper categories of SES, according to the HoIIingshead Four Factor Index of Social Status (HoIIingshead, 1975). Their homes had an average oi seven rooms. They owned an average of l.S television sets; 88% owned a color TV set Detailed descriptions of the families may be found in Anderson et al. (1985). Procedure Families whose names were obtained from city birth records were mailed an introductory letter that described the study, mentioned the possibility of observation in the home, and requested participation. A subsequent telephone call was made to inquire whether the family was willing to participate, answer any questions about the research, and schedule an appointment for an initial visit to the research center. Spanning a period of 1.5 months, each family participated in two laboratory seesions, filled out two 10-day diaries, and had observation equipment in their homes for 10 daySj Additional contact with the families included telephone calls to schedule laboratory visitSj to verify the progress of diaries, and to aij range installation and removal of equipment Details of the laboratory procedures are irre'i
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Child Development
evant to the present paper and will not be olution black-and-white monitor. After each 55 min of TV "on" time, the observer elaborated here. put the deck in still-frame mode and noted Home observation.—The equipment in- each person present in the viewing room. The stallation typically took 1.5—2 hours to com- observer also noted whether each person was plete and required two installers per unit. Of visually oriented toward the TV. Estimates of the original 99 families, 59 (60%) had more hours in the viewing room and visual attenthan one TV set. Of these families, 15 (25.4%) tion are based on these time samples. Interobhad multiple observation units installed. In server reliabilities were r(12) = .98 for presall cases, the primary TV set used by the fam- ence in the viewing room and r(7) = .90 for ily and additional TV sets used by the 5-year- visual attention. old child had an observation unit installed. Concurrent viewing diaries filled out by the Results parents indicated that an average of 89% of A total of 4,672.25 hours of recordings TV "on" time was monitored by the observa- were obtained from the 99 families. An additional equipment. tional 550 hours of television "on" time durDetailed descriptions of the home obser- ing the recording period were reported from vation apparatus may be found in Anderson viewing diaries for secondary televisions that et al. (1985) and in Nathan, Anderson, Field, were not monitored by recording equipment. and Collins (1985). Briefly, the equipment The viewing rooms contained no people consisted of two video cameras, a time-lapse 14.7% of the time that a TV set was on, rangvideo recorder, and control circuitr>'. One ing from 0% to 50%. Allen (1965), by comparicamera was used to cover the viewing room son, reported that the viewing rooms that he and was equipped with a wide-angle lens and monitored had no viewers 19% of the time. auto-servo iris that allowed it to effectively Three dependent variables were derived function at widely varying light levels. The from the time-lapse observations: percent viother camera was equipped with a zoom lens sual attention (defined as visual orientation and was focused on the TV screen. The toward the television, given presence in the equipment was designed to automatically be- viewing room), number of hours per week an gin recording when the TV set was turned on individual was observed with a monitored and stop recording when the TV set was television, and number of hours per week of turned off. Recording was done in black-and- visual attention. In the present paper, analwhite 1:36 time-lapse video such that a video yses of age trends in time spent with televiframe was recorded every 1.2 sec. A full- sion and hours of visual attention (based on screen image of the viewing room was re- the product of proportion of visual attention corded in every frame, and every 18 sec a 6- and time sp>ent with TV) will be restricted to sec 25% insert of the TV screen was recorded. those families (excluding visitors) in which at When the equipment was being in- least 90% of television "on" time was monistalled, the parent was asked to indicate the 5- tored by observation equipment (78 families). year-old child's usual viewing spot. The Analyses of visual attention are based on all wide-angle camera was placed to cover this 99 families, including visitors. area and encompass as much of the rest of the Percent Visual Attention viewing room as possible. The zoom-lens Descriptive tiend analyses were percamera was directed at the television set, and formed separately on children aged O-H the cart that housed the video deck was years and on adults. A hierarchical regression placed where it would be accessible to the analysis used age, sex, second- and thirdparents. The installers demonstrated how to degree polynomials of age, and interactions change the videocassettes (a signal light among these variables as independent variHashed after 27 hours of TV "on" time, indi- ables. In the analysis for 0—17-year-olds, age cating that a cassette was to be changed). linear, quadratic, and cubic terms were all Diaries were provided to be filled out simul- significant, F(l,247) = 49.72, 42.38, and taneously with the videotaping. Removal of 13.04, p < .01, accounting for 30% of the varithe equipment was arranged for about 12 days ance. The sex and interaction terms were not later, allowing 10 full days' taping. significant. The adult analysis revealed only an effect of sex, F(2,148) = 7.69, p < .01, due Data reduction.—Data reduction in- to greater attention to the TV by men than volved time sampling the 10 days of vid- women (63% vs. 54%). eotaped observation. An observer played Figure 1 shows a scatterplot of the mean each videotape on a Sony BVU 200 professional Quality video deck with a high-res- values at each age up to age 17 years, as •well
Anderson et al.
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FIG, 1.—Indicates percent visual attention to television as a function of age. The solid squares indicate averages in which there were three or more viewers at a given age; the X's indicate averages of one or two viewers at a given age; the solid diamond is the average for adult men; and the open diamond is the average for adult women. The line plots the hest fitting polynomial for ages 0-17 years (see text).
as the means for men and women. The solid function was fitted from the polynomial regresswn equation, Y = 19.80X - 1.91 X^ + .06X -(- 7.98. Visual attention dramatically increases through the preschool years and slowly increases through later childhood, finally diminishing among adults. There was no indication of an age trend among the adults. Adults' mean percent attention was compared with the mean for school-age children ages 6-17 years (eliminating the youngest age range with the obvious increase). Adult females paid significantly less visual attention to TV than the children, 54% versus 70%, '(181) = 5.44, p < .001. Adult men looked at the TV 63% of the time that they were with television, which was also significantly less than the school-age children, ((175) = 2.40, P< .05. Time Spent with TV It was expected that time spent with TV ld also follow age trends. Regression
analyses of the same form described above were performed for the two age groups on hours per week with TV, but no age trends or sex differences were found in either analysis. Children spent an average of 12.8 hours per week with TV (SD = 8.1). Adults spent an average of 11.5 hours per week (SD = 7.6). Hours Spent Looking at TV As expected from the f)ercent visual attention analyses, hours jjer week of visual attention to the TV in the younger group increased sharply from birth to age 10. This trend was revealed by significant linear and quadratic effects, F(l,174) = 11.44, p < .01, and 9.78, p < .05, accounting for 13% of the variance. There was no significant effect of sex. No significant trends were found for adults. Figure 2 shows the scatterplot of mean hours per week looking at the TV as a function of age as well as the fitted regression frinction, Y = 2.52X - .14X2 ^ £.68. Schoolage children were compared with adults, yielding a marginally significant difference.
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FIG. 2.—Indicates hours per week looking at TV as a function of age. The solid squares indicate averages in which there were three or more viewers at a given age; the X's indicate averages of one or two viewers at a given age. The line plots the best fitting polynomial for ages 0-17 years (see text).
9.14 hours versus 7.56 hours, t(173) = 1.93, p < .055, due to the children's higher percent of visual attention. Relationship between Time Spent with TV and Visual Attention It is a reasonable supposition that percent attention to TV might be negatively or positively correlated with time spent with TV. A negative correlation would be expected if, for example, lighter viewers find TV more novel and, tiierefore, of greater attention value. Anderson et al. (1985) have reported that there is no relationship of percent attention and time with TV for the 5-year-olds in the present sample. In the present analyses, in neither the child group considered as a whole nor the adult group was time with TV related to percent attention (r[180] = -.05 for children and r[111] = - .07 for adults). This lack of a relationship should be interpreted with some caution, since the estimates of percent of visual attention may be individually unreliable for viewers who spend little time with television. Later reports will examine the relation-
ship with a much finer-grained sampling procedure. Discussion Our time-sampled videotaped observations of 4,672 hours of TV use in the homes of 99 families revealed (1) that the viewing room contained no people 14.7% of the time that the TV set was on; (2) there were no significant age or sex effects of time spent with television; (3) there was a dramatic increase in percent visual attention to TV from ages 0-5 years, leveling off during the schoolage years and declining during adulthood; (4) adult males looked at the TV a greater percentage of time than adult females; (5) there was no significant correlation between time spent with TV and the percentage of visual attention; (6) there was an increase up to about age 10 years in hours per week spent visually oriented toward TV, with a subsequent decline after age 10. The increase in percent visual attention to TV through early childhood corresponds
Anderson et al. with findings from a number of laboratory studies (Alwitt et al., 1980; Anderson & Levin, 1976; Anderson, Lorch, Field, & Sanders, 1981; Anderson, Lorch, Smith, Bradford, & Levin, 1981) as well as home observations by Carew (1980). Such an age trend was not anticipated by early theories of TV' viewing, which characterized young children's attention to television as driven by salient and novel formal features such as motion, form complexity, cinematic techniques, and the like (e.g., Huston-Stein & Wright, 1977; Singer, 1980). In contiast, Anderson and Lorch (1983) have proposed that program comprehensibility is a primary determinant of \oung children's attention to television. From thi,s point of view, the increase in visual attention over the early years reflects the increasing comprehensibility of TV programming as tlie child gains in receptive cognitive and linguistic skills. Visual attention is maintained at fairlyhigh levels (about 70%) throughout later childhood and adolescence, although hours of visual attention decline afrer age 10. Anderson and Smith (1984) have argued that television may provide an optimally paced and structured source of information for older children. Having mastered fundamental cinematic and linguistic codes, television provides a continuous, relatively easily understood source of entertainment and social information. Failures of comprehension at the level of an integrated understanding of an entire adult dramatic program, as documented b\ Collins (1983), among others, may not be perceived by the school-age child. Attention, therefore, may be high, despite the comprehension failure. Salomon (1983) has found that American children judge television as easy to comprehend relative to text. Since reading is often not well mastered by younger school-age children and presents greater difficulty of local comprehension, television may, as a consequence, hold attention better and therefore be preferred to text at these and later ages. It is possible that such a preference for television displaces and thus interferes with reading, but evidence on this issue, although consistent with the displacement hypothesis, remains largely inconclusive (Homik, 1981; Roberts, Bachen, Homby, & HernandezRamos, 1984).
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also noted that housewives were frequentlyinattentive. Anderson and Smith (1984) suggested that for adults, TV viewing is highly overleamed and easily time-shared with other ongoing activities. As such, less visual attention is necessary for frill comprehension, especially since the correlation between looking at television and listening to it decreases with age (Field & Anderson, 1985). The sex differences in visual attention to TV among adults may be reflective of differences in employment status between the men and women of these traditional nuclear families. Nearly all the men were employed full time, whereas half the women were full-time housewives, with most of the remainder holding part-time jobs. The women were frequently observed doing housework infrontof the T\', whereas the men appeared to do so less ofren. Quantitative analyses of concurrent activities during T\' viewing^will be reported in a later paper. Futiire, more detailed analyses of the videotapes will examine several aspects of TV viewing not dealt with here. It is obvious that attention to television varies considerably depending on program content and that this variation depends on age. There appear, furthermore, to be consistent individual differences in styles of viewing. The fact that children spend about a third of their time with TV not looking at television also bears considerable analysis. Children not only leave the viewing room and retum in the middle of programs but also play with toys, play with other children, read, and interact with parents. Civen that American children spend a large portion of their lives in front of televisions, it will be of considerable social and scientific interest to know how that time is spent. References
Allen, C, (1965). Photographing the TV audience. Journal of Advertising Research, 14, 2—8. Alwitt, L., Anderson, D., Lorch, E., & Levin, S. (1980). Preschool children's visual attention to television. Human Communication Research, 7, 52-67. Anderson, D,, & Field, D. (1983). Children's attention to television: Implications for production. In M. Meyer (Ed.), Children and the formal features of television (pp, 56-96). Munich: Saur, Anderson, D., Field, D., Collins, P., Lorch, E., & Nathan, J. (1985). Estimates of young chilAdults paid less visual attention to TV dren's time with television: A methodological than older children and adolescents. Women, comparison of parent reports with time-lapse furthermore, looked less at TV than men. video home observation. Child Development, Bechtel et al. (1972) reported a similar decline 56, 1345-1357. among adults who viewed TV at home and
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Anderson, D., & Levin, S. (1976). Young children's attention to Sesame Street. Child Development, 47,806-811. Anderson, D., & Lorch, E. (1983). Looking at television: Action or reaction? In J. Bryant & D. Anderson (Eds.), Children's understanding of television: Research on attention and comprehension (pp. 1-33). New York; Academic Press, Anderson, D., Lorch, E., Field, D., & Sanders, J. (1981). The effects of TV program comprehensibility' on preschool children's visual attention to television. Child Development, 52, 151-157. Anderson, D., Lorch, E., Smith, R., Bradford, R., & Levin, S. (1981). Effects of peer presence on preschool children's television viewing behavior. Developmental Psychology, 17, 446-453, Anderson, D., & Smith, R. (1984). Young children's TV viewing: The problem of cognitive continuity. In F. Morrison, C. Lord, & D. Keating (Eds.), Advances in applied developmental psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 115-163). New York: Academic Press. Bechtel, R., Achelpohl, C, & Akers, R. (1972). Correlates between observed behavior and questionnaire responses on television viewing. In E. Rubinstein, C. Comstock, 6c J. Murray (Eds.), Television and social behavior: Vol. 4. Television in day-to-day life: Pattems of use (pp, 274-344). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, Bryant, J., Zillmann, D., & Brown, D. (1983). Entertainment features in children's educational television: Effects on attention and information acquisition. In ], Bryant & D. Anderson (Eds,), Children's understanding of television: Research on attention and comprehension (pp. 221-240). New York: Academic Press. Calvert, S., Huston, A., Watkins, B., & Wright, J. (1982). The effects of selective attention to television forms on children's comprehension of content. Child Development, 53, 601-610. Carew, J. (1980). Experience and the development of intelligence in young children at home and in day care. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 45(6-7, Serial No. 187). Collins, A. W. (1983). Interpretation and inference in children's television viewing. In J. Bryant & D. Anderson (Eds.), Children's understanding of television: Research on attention and comprehension (pp. 125-150). New York: Academic Press. Comstock, C . Chaffee, S., Katzman, N., McCombs, M., & Roberts, D. (1978). Television and human behavior. New York: Columbia University Press. Field, D., & Anderson, D. (1985). Instruction and modality effects on children's television attention and comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 91-100.
HoIIingshead, A. (1975). Four factor index of social status. New Haven, CT: Yale University, Department of Sociology. Homik, R, (1981), Out-of-school television and schooling: Hypotheses and methods. Review of Educational Research, 51, 199-214. Huston-Stein, A., & Wright, J. (1977). Modeling the medium: Effects of formal properties of children's television programs. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans, Huston, A,, & Wright, J. (1983). Children's processing of television: The informative functions of formal features. In J. Bryant & D. Anderson (Eds.), Children's understanding of television: Research on attention and comprehension (pp. 35-68). New York: Academic Press. Huston, A., & Wrigbt, J. (1985). The forms of television: Their impact and utility for the developing child viewer. Unpublished manuscript, Lorch, E,, Anderson, D., & Levin, S. (1979). The relationship of visual attention to children's comprehension of television. Child Development, 50, 722-727. Murray, J. (1972). Television in inner-city homes: Viewing behavior of young boys. In E. Rubinstein, C, Comstock, & J. Murray (Eds.), Television and social behavior: Vol. 4. Television in day-to-day life: Pattems of use (pp. 345-394). Washington, DC: Government Printing OfHce. Nathan, J., Anderson, D., Field, D., & Collins, P. (1985). Television viewing at home: Distances and visual angles of children and adults. Human Factors, 27, 467-476. Nielsen Television Index. (1981). Child and teenage television viewing (Special Release). New York: NTI. Pearl, D., Bouthile, L., & Lazar, J. (1982), Television and behavior: Ten years of scientific progress and implications for the eighties: Vol. 2. Technical reviews. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Roberts, D., Bachen, C, Homby, M., & HemandezRamos, P. (1984). Reading and television: Predictors of reading at different age levels. Communication Research, 11, 9—50. Salomon, C. (1983). Television watching and mental effort: A social psychological view. In J, Bryant & D. Anderson (Eds.), Children's understanding of television: Research on attention and comprehension (pp. 181—198). New York: Academic Press. Schramm, W., Lyle, J., & Parker, E. (1961). Television in the lives of our children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Singer, J. (1980). The power and limitations of television: A cognitive-affective analysis. In PTannenfjaum (Ed.), The entertainment functions of television (pp. 31-65). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Smith, R., Anderson, D. R., & Fischer, C. (1985)
Anderson et al. Young children's comprehension of montage. Child Development, 56, 962-971. Sproull, N. (1973). Visual attention, modeling behaviors, and other verbal and nonverbal metacommunication of pre-kindergarten cfiildren viewing Sesame Street. American Educational Research Journal, 10, 101-114.
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Watt, J., & Welch, A. (1983). Effects of static and dynamic complexity on children's attention and recall of televised instruction. In J, Bryant & D, Anderson (Eds,), Children's understanding of television: Research on attention and comprehension (pp, 69—102). New York: Academic Press.
