Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

USE THIS FIRST PARAGRAPH ONLY FOR GENERAL CATALOGS... This book addresses the subject of children and television -- how they view it, what they think of specific programs, and how these likes and dislikes affect learning of the content presented. Broad in coverage, it looks at evaluation, comprehension, and impact in the drama, information and entertainment domains. In all cases, demographic and background experiences and knowledge are assessed for their contribution to learning, attitude/opinion change, and stability as a function of exposure to particular program content. Empirical investigations of police dramas, science programs, and quiz shows are conducted utilizing experimental methods and involving approximately 1,000 children in a series of studies.

Related to existing research literature, this work confirms the view of the child/adolescent as an active viewer who is critical, constructive, and capable of learning from the television medium -- even when the program is clearly broadcast as entertainment rather than as education or information. This volume is unique in that it addresses questions of the relation between children and diverse television content in terms of its impact on social and informational schemas.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Lea's Communication Series (p. ii)
• Preface (p. vii)
• 1 Introduction (p. 1)
• 2 The Research (p. 22)
• 3 Children's Evaluations and Comprehension of Drama Programs (p. 38)
• 4 Impact of Drama Programs on Children's Knowledge, Beliefs, and Attitudes (p. 60)
• 5 Science Programs with Single Themes: Evaluation, Comprehension, and Cognitive Impact (p. 90)
• 6 Multitopic Science Magazine Shows: Evaluation, Comprehension, and Cognitive Impact (p. 129)
• 7 Children's Perceptions of and Learning from TV Entertainment (quiz) Programs (p. 165)
• 8 Interpreting the Cognitive Impact of Television (p. 200)
• References (p. 228)
• Author Index (p. 240)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Taken together, these two books reveal the contours of the debate over the effects of television on children. Television and Children draws tentative and marginal conclusions from painstaking empirical research, and Adolescents and the Media makes global recommendations based on a review of effects literature. Television and Children provides a detailed account of a cognitive study in which a psychologist (Clifford--Univ. of East London), a media researcher (Gunter), and an "educationist" (McAleer) tested British schoolchildren before and after they viewed a police drama, a science program, or a quiz show. Results are examined in terms of a variety of demographic variables and outcomes (knowledge, attitudes, etc.) and are subjected to sophisticated statistical analyses in an attempt to "tease" out relationships among variables. All this sound and fury signify little, however: the primary finding is that children can, in fact, learn facts from television--at least in the short term! In contrast, Strasburger (pediatrics, Univ. of New Mexico School of Medicine) makes passionate claims and leaps of logic and offers "common sense" cures for media woes. The work is compromised by frequent lapses in reasoning and accuracy. (His first inaccuracy occurs in the title, since Adolescents and the Media focuses almost exclusively on only one medium: television.) Nevertheless, there is much of value here. An opening chapter provides an excellent overview of how mass communication research is conducted, and subsequent chapters focus on current findings regarding the effects on adolescents of televised portrayals of violence, sex, and the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and food. Both books have comprehensive and well-referenced bibliographies; the works listed in Adolescents and the Media are more current, although the bibliography in Television and Children is more effectively used to locate its study within larger theoretical contexts. Robert Liebert and Joyce Sprafkin's The Early Window: Effects of Television on Children and Youth, 3rd ed. (1988), remains the classic work in the field, but each of these new works has its place and its audience. Television and Children is recommended for undergraduate and graduate collections in media studies as an exemplar of meticulously designed, executed, and presented media research; Adolescents and the Media is recommended for a general readership and for undergraduate collections in media studies, health care, and education. T. Gleeson Neumann College