8115115
Ja m e s , N avtta E l o is e C u m m in g s
TELEVISION GAMES CHILDREN PLAY: CHILDREN’S COMMUNICATIVE USES OF TELEVISION
The Ohio Stale University Ph.D. 1981
University Microfilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
Copyright 1981 by James, Navita Eloise Cummings All Rights Reserved TELEVISION GAMES CHILDREN PLAY: CHILDREN'S
COMMUNICATIVE USES OF TELEVISION
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fu lfillm ent of the Requirements for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Navita Cummings James, B.A., M.A.
* * * * *
The Ohio State University
1981
Reading Committee: Approved By
Joseph M. Foley
Thomas A. McCain
Victor D. Wall Adviser Department of Communication dedicated to Tammy (age four) and Teddy (age fiv e ) who taught me th e ir worlds of tel evision were very d iffe re n t from my world of television ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted to the children of the day care center, the day care center staff, and the children's parents for their participation in this research.
Sage Publications, Inc0, is to be thanked fo r th e ir permission to quote from Children in Front of the Small Screen by Grant Noble.
I would like to acknowledge my adviser for his continued interest and enthusiasm for this project and fo r his continued demand for excellence. He has provided for me and others an example of what it truly means to be a "scholar."
My family deserves special thanks fo r the continuous fa ith and support they have given me. To those who helped me get through the last stages of this project—my parents, Cynthia, Carol, Faye,
Herndon, and Emma Jean— I am forever g ra te fu l. I thank my husband
Julius for the confidence he had in my ability to complete this project as well as for his help. Finally, I thank my daughter Erika, who during her f ir s t year in this world shared her mommy with this research. VITA
February 16, 1952...... Born - Columbus, Ohio
1973 ...... B.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
1973-1977 ...... Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University
1975 ...... M.A., Communication, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Thesis T itle : "Predicting Black Viewer Preferences in Black-oriented Television Programs"
1977-1981 ...... Adjunct Instructor, Department of Human Communication, Rutgers University
RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS
"Predicting Black Viewer Preferences in Black-oriented Television Programs" if with T. McCain). Paper presented at the International Communication Association Convention, Portland, Oregon, April 1976.
"Nonverbal Communication and the Small Group." In V. D. Wall, Jr. (E d .), Small Group Communication: Selected Readings. Columbus, Ohio: Collegiate Printing Company, 1976.
"WOSU-TV: Public Television Viewership in Columbus, Ohio" (with T. McCain). Research Report fo r Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Grant No. 8141), September 1976.
"Methods for. Identifying Black Community Leaders for Ascertainment" (with T. McCain & J. Hawkins). Paper presented at the National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention, Chicago, October 1976.
"Amos ' n* Andy V Society." Paper presented at the Broadcasting Education Association Convention, Washington, D.C., 1977.
"In terracial Communication: A Rules Perspective." Paper accepted for presentation at the International Communication Association Con vention, B erlin, Germany, June 1977. iv FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Mass Comnunication
Minor Field: Interpersonal Communication and Communication Theory
Studies in Mass Communication Theory and Research. Professor Thomas A. McCain
Studies in Mass Communication Law, Public Policy, and Technology. Professor Joseph M. Foley
Studies in Communication Theory, Interpersonal Comnunication, Ethnomethodology. Professors Victor D. Wall and Leonard C. Hawes
GRANTS
"Predicting Black Viewer Preferences in Black-oriented Television Programs." Grant from the National Association of Broadcasters, 1974, $500.00
HONORS AND AWARDS
Women's Honoraries, The Ohio State University, 1971-1973 Alpha Lambda Delta 1971 Chimes 1972 Mirrors 1971 Mortar Board 1973
Beanie Drake Leadership Award, The Ohio State University, 1971
The Outstanding Senior Award, The Ohio State University, 1973
The National Student Register, 1973
Walter B„ Emery Scholarship Award, Department of Communication, The Ohio State University, 1974
Paul Robeson Faculty Teaching Award, Rutgers University, 1978-1979
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page DEDICATION...... i i
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... i i i
VITA ...... iv
LIST OF TABLES...... ix
LIST OF FIGURES...... x
INTRODUCTION...... 1
Chapter
I. TELEVISION IN THE LIVES OF OUR CHILDREN: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEM AND QUESTIONS ...... 4
Consumption and Preferences in Television Viewing. . . 5 Communicative and Social Uses of Television Viewing. . 14 The Theoretical and Methodological Approach ...... 30 Statement of Research Problem and Research Questions...... „ . 32
I I . THE METHOD...... 37
Overview of Factors Affecting Decision-Making. . . . . 38 Selection of the Day Care Center...... 38 Selection of Subjects ...... 40 Selection of Procedures for Data C ollection ...... 43 Procedures fo r Data A n a ly s is...... 52
I I I . RESULTS I: THE SOCIAL ACTORS, THE SOCIAL SETTING, THE CHRONOLOGY OF DAILY ACTIVITIES, AND THE RESEARCHER'S EXPERIENCES AND SOCIALIZATION...... 60
The Social Actors ...... 60 The Social Setting of the Center ...... 72 A Chronology of Daily A c tiv itie s at the Center during the Summer...... 74 The Researcher: Data-Collection Experiences and Socialization into the Social Setting ...... 76
vi Page IV. RESULTS I I : CHILDREN AND TELEVISION CONSUMPTION, PREFERENCES, CHILD VS. PARENT REPORTS, AND PERCEIVED REALITY...... 98
The Children and Their Television Consumption .... 99 Children's Television Program and Character Preferences ...... 101 Children and Parent Reports: A Comparison...... 105 The Children's Perceptions about Television ...... I l l
V. RESULTS I I I . TELEVISION-BASED PLAY AND TALK IN THE VIEWING CONTEXT...... 131
Television-Based Play and Talk in the Viewing Context ...... 132 The Game of Watching Television: A Description . . . 157 The Game of Watching Television: An Analysis .... 163
VI. RESULTS IV: TELEVISION-BASED PLAY AND TALK IN THE NON-VIEWING CONTEXT...... 180
Television-Based T a lk ...... 181 Television-Based Games: A Description ...... 185 Television-Based Games: An Analysis...... 201
V II. DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS, RETROSPECT, AND CONCLUSION...... 230
Discussion ...... 230 Implications and Recommendations ...... 264 Limitations...... 276 Retrospect ...... •...... 278 Conclusion ...... 279
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 280
APPENDIXES
A. Information Packet Provided to Day Care Centers ..... 291
B. Children's Interview Questions ...... 301
C. Parent Interview Questions ...... 309
D. Teacher Interview Questions ...... 315
E. Sample Interview and Observation Data Form on TV-Based Games...... 319
v i i APPENDIXES Page
F. Children's Consumption Data ...... 321
G. Children's Preferences Data ...... 323
v iii LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. Demographic Information on the Primary Subjects .... 63
2. Children's Favorite Programs by Program T itle s...... 324
3. Number of Favorite Television Programs by Program Categories...... 325
4. Percentages of Children's Preferences for Different Program Categories...... 326
5. Children's Favorite Television Characters ...... 327
6. Number of Favorite Television Characters by Program Categories ...... 328
ix LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1. Children's verbal and vocal acts during television viewing ...... <, . . . 134
2. Children's nonverbal acts during television viewing ...... 148
3. Interview and observation data analysis form ...... 320
x INTRODUCTION
The impact of television consumption on children has been a topic
of heated debate fo r many years. The focus of much of this concern
has been on how children are in some way harmed by viewing certain
kinds of television content and/or certain amounts of television fare.
Specifically, television programs with violent content have been
"accused" of making children behave more physically aggressively in
their interactions with others. Television commercials have been
"accused" of making children increase th e ir purchasing and spending
requests. And on a more generic level, the activity of watching tele
vision, regardless of content viewed, has been "accused" of making
children more passive and less creative. The purpose of the present
study is not to put television on trial but, rather, to see how young
children use it.
If one wanted to develop a broad, more critical understanding of
the role of television in the lives of young children, it would be
necessary to go beyond looking for the "harmful" effects of tele
vision viewing on the young. However, looking specifically for the
"good" or pro-social effects of television viewing on children would be as re s tric tiv e as the former. An alternative approach would be to describe how children use television from their perspective, imposing as few adult constructs and adult value judgments as possible. What
do children see when they watch television? How do children make sense of what they see on television? How do children use television,
and what do they get from television as they interact with other
children and adults? Research on children's cognitive development and
television viewing indicates that what children see while watching a
television program or commercial is not necessarily the same thing
seen by adults. I f children indeed see television d iffe re n tly than adults do, then perhaps they use television differently as well.
To begin to address these concerns, the following research was conducted. In p articu lar, the focus of this study was on how day care center children use television in their everyday lives. For eight weeks,children ranging from three to seven years old were observed in a day care center as they played, talked, ate and watched television.
An "eclectic" theoretical framework was adopted fo r the study,drawing from several related theoretical perspectives and including ethno- methodology, interactionism, and the developing rules perspective in communication theory. Participant observation was used to focus attention on the children's observable television-based talk, television-based play, and use of television-based consumer products such as toys and clothes. In addition to the field observations, in terviews about how the children used television in th e ir communicative interactions were conducted with the children, their parents, and the day care center teachers.
As provided by the tenets of participant observation, the specific research questions and focus of the study emerged during the course of the fie ld observations. In this case, the focus was narrowed to young children's use of television-based materials in their spontaneous play. The following research is reported in seven chapters. Chapter
I provides a review of relevant research and presents the formal research questions. Chapter II presents the methodological proce dures. Chapters I I I through VI present the results of this study, and relevant discussion is included at the end of each chapter.
Chapter VII draws together the findings of the results chapters. CHAPTER I
TELEVISION IN THE LIVES OF OUR YOUNGER CHILDREN:
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND STATEMENT OF
RESEARCH PROBLEM AND QUESTIONS
Research on the impact of television on young children is now
entering its fourth decade. Since the early studies of Maccoby (1951,
1954), Riley and Riley (1951), Himmelweit, Oppenheim, and Vince (1958),
and Schramm, Lyle, and Parker (1961), researchers in the Western world have attempted to provide an accurate view of the role of tele
vision in the lives of children. Of all the age groups investigated,
the preschool child is one of the most in trig u in g ,fo r i t is with this group that television might potentially have its greatest impact. It
has already been determined that by the time a child begins his or her formal education at the age of six or seven years old, he or she is
already a seasoned television viewer with definite, well- established tastes and preferences for television fare and patterns of consumption. What are some of these preferences? What are these pat terns of consumption? How are these preferences and patterns of con
sumption related to various social and psychological factors.
More importantly, what role does television play in the development of social and communication skills in the preschooler? This chapter
focuses on these questions, providing a brief overview of research 5 findings on preschool children and television . Special emphasis is on the communicative and social uses of television by the preschooler.
Concluding th is chapter is a presentation of the theory and method used and the statement of the research problem and questions.
Consumption and Preferences in Television Viewing
Preschool children watch a lo t of television. In fa c t, te le vision is the most used mass medium of these children occupying a large part of their time. Children begin watching television at very young ages. According to a survey of mothers in C alifo rn ia, as many as thirty percent of their infants had started viewing television by the time they were six months old,and almost sixty per cent of the children were viewers by the time they were one year of age
(Epstein & Bolzer, 1976). In other studies more conservative esti mates are provided. Comstock, Chaffee, Katzman, and Roberts (1978), in their review of research on children,report that fourteen percent of two year olds were regular viewers of television. It is generally agreed that by the time most children have reached th e ir th ird or fourth birthday, they are regular viewers of television with definite program preferences (Comstock et a l, 1978; Greenberg, 1972; Liebert,
Neale, & Davidson, 1973; Lyle & Hoffman, 1976; Stevenson, 1972; von
Feilitzen, 1976; Wartella, Alexander, & Lemish, 1978). Many of these children are able to recognize by name characters they have "met" on television (Lyle & Hoffman, 1976). The programs most popular with the preschool audience are cartoons f i r s t , situation comedies second and noncartoon children's programs third (Comstock et a l., 1978). Adult programs such as action-adventure programs also contribute s ig n ifi cantly to the television diets of preschoolers, especially young boys
(Comstock et a l., 1978; von Feilitzen, 1976). The favorite television characters of the preschooler include animated characters, puppets, ani mals and funny adults (see Lyle & Hoffman, 1972b;Schramm et a l, 1961;
Wartella et a l . , 1978)»
Almost unanimously, younger children report they lik e to watch television (Lyle & Hoffman, 1976). Their heaviest viewing times are in the early morning, mid-to-late afternoon, and early evening (prime time). For the most part,children report they watch television with other family members rather than alone, and by the time they are five years old they report they make their own program selections rather than th e ir parents or older siblings choosing for them (Lyle & Hoff man, 1976).
Young children between the ages of two and fiv e watch on the average twenty-nine hours of television per week (Comstock et a l.,
1978). In comparison to their older sisters and brothers of previous decades, children of the 1970s appeared to be watching more television
(Comstock et a l., 1978; Greenberg, 1976; Schramm et a l., 1961). Most summaries of research in the 1970s found preschoolers' television viewing to be around two or more hours per day (J. R. Brown, 1976;
Comstock et a l . , 1978; Stein & Friedrich, 1972; Liebert et a l . , 1973;
Murray, 1976). Friedrich and Stein (1973), however, caution that these estimates can be grossly misleading, e.g., it has been reported that some children have viewed as l i t t l e as fiv e hours per week and others up to as much as 88 hours per week. There are several closely related factors which appear to have varying amounts of influence on television consumption by children.
These include social correlates (e.g., age, sex, race, income, family communication patterns, relationships with peers) and psychological correlates (e.g., intelligence, creativity, imagination, cognitive development). Some of these correlates are discussed below.
Social Correlates of Television Viewing
Several researchers have found that social correlates exist for the television viewing of young children; however, the findings have not always been consistent and some findings are conflicting
(Comstock et a l . , 1978). S p ecifically, preschool age g irls were found to d iffe r from preschool boys in what they watched and, in some cases, how much television they watched (Comstock et a l . , 1978; von F e ilitze n ,
1976). Girls were reported to prefer more situation comedy and children's education programs when compared to boys. Boys, on the other hand, were reported to prefer more action-adventure cartoons and more adult programs when compared to g irls (Lyle & Hoffman, 1972; von
F e ilitz e n , 1976; Wartella et a l . , 1978). Generally, preschool boys and girls are not found to differ much in the amount of television they view; however, when a difference is noted i t is usually the boys who are reported to view more (Singer, 1977). Sex differences become more pronounced with older children (Comstock et a l . , 1978).
Some differences in preschool children's viewing of television have also been related to racial and ethnic differences. Greenberg and Dervin (1970) found the Black children watched more television than White children at all income levels. Lyle and Hoffman (1972) also report Black children watch more television, even when social status is controlled. Differences in program preferences based on race have also been noted (Comstock et a l . , 1978).
Family income and socio-economic status of the child are often found to be related to television consumption. Generally, research has indicated that lower SES children tend to view more television than higher SES children (J. R. Brown, 1976; Greenberg, 1976; Howitt &
Cumberbatch, 1976; Liebert et a l., 1973; Schramm et a l., 1961; Stein
& Friedrich, 1973). Comstock et a l. (1978) report that children ages two to eleven in households with annual incomes of $15,000 or greater view several hours less than children in households with lower income.
S im ilarly, children in households where the head completed four or more years of college view considerably less television than do children in the remaining households.
Age is generally reported to be a very strong factor in describ ing differences in children's consumptive patterns (Comstock et a l., 1978).
These differences w ill be addressed in more detail below in the discussion on cognitive development.
The social relationships children have with their families and peer groups are also reported to be related to patterns of television consumption in the child . Lyle and Hoffman (1976) found that the times of day children watched television were related to whether the c h ild 's mother was working or not working. They also found that program selection freedom varied with whether or not the mother was working. Other research has revealed that parental viewing patterns and preferences are often related to children's viewing patterns and preferences. Von F e ilitze n (1976) suggests television viewing is largely a matter of the family's television behavior. Children, especially preschoolers, follow to some extent family habits and also seem to learn what the family lik e s . For example, i f parents are high consumers of television, their children may also be high consumers of televisio n .
Finally, family communication patterns are reported to be related to older children's consumption of media (Chaffee & McLeod, 1970,
1972; Chaffee, McLeod, & Atkins, 1970; McLeod & Brown, 1976). The findings from this research suggest that the orientation of the family toward social dimensions and the orientation of the family toward concepts result in four types of family communication pat terns. Distinct patterns of media consumption of children in these four types of families have been found.
Peer groups have been found to have-some relationship to te le vision consumption, but this appears to be the case prim arily fo r the older child (Dembo & McCron, 1976; Riley & Riley, 1951; Schramm e t a l . ,
1961).
In sum, while social factors appear to be related to the child's consumption of television, there are some conflicting reports.
Perhaps even more importantly, according to Comstock et a l. (1978), because television has become a common experience in American l i f e , there has been a substantial reduction in differences related to demographic characteristics of the audience's television use. Age of 10 the child is an exception.
Psychological Correlates of Television Viewing
Psychological variables investigated in relationship to child ren's consumption of television include intelligence (IQ), creativity, imagination, id e n tific a tio n , and cognitive development. By fa r the most important of these psychological variables has been cognitive development.
Television consumption by children repeatedly has been found to be related to cognitive development and age (J. R. Brown, 1976; Com stock et a l . , 1978; Noble, 1975; von F e ilitz e n , 1976; Ward, Wackman, &
Wartella, 1977; Wartella et a l., 1978; Winick & Winick, 1979).
Drawing on the developmental stages id e n tifie d by Piaget and others, researchers in this area have found the developmental stage a child is in,roughly correlated to the age of the child, in part pre determines how that child w ill process and use television fare.
Ward et al. (1977), in their research on children and television advertising, reported there were consistent age-related changes in the kinds of information children attended to. They suggested these changes reflected basic developmental growth. More sp ec ific ally they stated
the more perceptually bound the child ( i . e . , the younger the child), the greater the influence of perceptual characteristics o f commercials on his attention; the less perceptually bound the child (i.e ., the older the child), the greater the influence of the content or conceptual aspects of commercials on his atten tion. (p. 53, emphasis mine)
In other words, younger children responded prim arily to perceptual stim uli whereas older children were able to respond to commercials on 11 a more abstract level (e.g., knowing the function of a commercial, selecting functional and performance attributes of products when con sidering product purchases).
Noble (1975) also suggested Piaget's developmental stages a f fected how a child viewed television and presented a scheme which showed how a child in each of Piaget's la s t three stages processed and used televised information (Chapter 5 ). For the preschool child in the pre-operational stage of development (two to fiv e years o ld ),
Noble suggested the following television-viewing characteristics:
1. Young children see a series of separate and fragmentary incidents rather than the story of a television film.
2. The content o f these incidents suggest that children w ill see either all good or all bad characters, and usually the good w ill proceed to k ill the bad.
3. It is likely that the three- and four-year-old child will not invariably recognise the identities of the principal characters throughout the film . The perception of the film characters is dominated by the setting in which they are film ed.
4. Moreover, young children tend to believe implicitly what they see on television to be real.
5. Young children while viewing may read incidents into the plot from their own imaginations, or add incidents and events that they think should have occurred.
6. It seems likely that young children will use television programmes as the basis for social play—although such play is likely to be of a highly stereotyped nature.
7. Children may acquire future how-to-behave models from watching televisio n , (p. 94)
For the child in the concrete operational period (six to eleven years o ld ), Noble suggested the television-viewing experience resulted in the child's quickly becoming aware that films have a story. The 12 a b ility to perceive beyond events and comprehend the motives and feelings of filmed characters developed during this stage at a much slower pace. By the time the child reached the la s t stage of cogni tive development, formal operations, at approximately twelve years of age, his viewing patterns were very similar to an adult.
Winick and Winick (1979) also suggested the age-developmental stage a child was in had certain consequences for that child's tele- vision-viewing experience. In their research they studied age-develop mental patterns along six television -related dimensions: fantasy, believability, identification, humor, morality,and violence. While both children and adults were included in th e ir sample, fo r the present discussion only the conclusions on preschool children's te le - vision-viewing experiences are reported. First,the focus is on children two to three years old.
As the children two to three years old busily constructed their social realities, they used both "fantasy-based" materials and
"reality-based" materials. These children believed what they saw to be real unless there was some contradictory information. When they identified with televised materials, this identification was charac terized by the children's references being self-centered„ Their own experiences were recalled by the content or characters they saw on television,and they frequently had a need and the ability to continue the televised action (p. 79). Children in th is age group enjoyed humor. They experienced it when there was disorientation, when the unexpected occurred. However, what was humorous to these children may have been to ta lly beyond an ad u lt's comprehension. Violence was 13 handled in a number of different ways by these children. If the aggressive character was attractive to the children, they had the ability to join in the action. If the motor action was used against someone or something, the actions the children exhibited might have been violent. If the children accepted the actions, emulation, especially of gross actions such as running, chasing, and falling down,was possible. F in a lly , some children between two and three years old experienced anxiety while watching violent and/or disturbing scenes. One way they handled this anxiety was by simply walking away from the program. In contrast to the children two to three years old were the children four to six years old.
The children four to six years old were learning to differenti ate "what is real" from "what is make-believe." Like the two and three year olds, they tended to believe what they saw in the absence of any contradictory information. When these children identified with televised materials, references were s till self-centered; however, id en tificatio n s began to move towards the more mature hero-figure.
They had the ability to identify specific traits and characteristics of the hero; they could establish relationships with television char acters and maintain conversations with both inanimate and animate characters on the screen. As they identified with televised materials, they also had the a b ility to emulate both gross and subtle verbal and nonverbal behaviors of characters. The child between four and six also enjoyed humor as reflected in his or her enthusiasm fo r situa tion comedies, old movies, and cartoons where body and facial move ments were a significant portion of the humor (c .f., slapstick). For 14
this group, word play was also a common source of humor. Notions of morality may have been very stereotyped, e.g., all men in white hats
are good. Frequently, these children accepted the goodness and
strength of superpeople (e.g., "Batman") who logically were even more powerful than the children's parents. Violence was handled by children four to six years old by either attacking with the aggressor or empathizing with the victim. In terms of language-usage, these children shifted from declarative statements centered around "I" to questions related to action.
In summary, Noble (197.5), Winick and Winick (1979) and others have argued that the age-developmental stage a child is in has certain predictable consequences for the televiewing experience of the child.
S p ecifically, when compared to adults, the preschool child did not
"see" the same content and/or assign the same meanings to television programs that adults did. The conclusions of Noble and the Winicks were generally similar and compatible.
The above discussion has provided a general background of pre school children's consumption and preferences in television viewing.
Both social and psychological correlates of preschooler television viewing have also been addressed. Now the discussion focuses on how children use "what they get" from television in th e ir communicative and social interactions.
Conmunicative and Social Uses of Television Viewing
Young children learn from television and they frequently use what they learn in conmunicative interactions (Noble, 1975; von Feilitzen, 15
1976). Von Feilitzen suggests children watch television in order to learn,through social contact (including parasocial relationships \ how to interact with people and improve their social contact. Noble suggests children learn about how people interact with one another and about various roles in the world through watching television characters who regularly appear on television. These regular charac ters constitute the child 's "screen community." Noble asserts that the screen community of the child in modern societies functions sim ilarly to the village of the child in traditional societies. Both communities allow children the opportunity to observe people of d if ferent circumstances on a regular basis. From a developmental per spective, this need to observe human interaction is much more impor tant to the preschool child than i t is to an adult.
Researchers have documented several ways young children use what they learn from television when interacting with others. Below is a discussion of some of these ways.
Television As a Source of Violent and Aggressive Behavior
Most of the research on the influence of television on children has focused on violent television programming and aggressive behavior
(Comstock et a l., 1978). All methods of research, e.g., laboratory experiments, surveys, experimental field studies, yield the same results: there is a relationship between viewing of violence and various measures of aggressiveness. (See the following summaries of this research: Comstock et a l., 1979; Friedrich & Stein, 1973; Left- kowitz, Eron, Walder, & Huesmann, 1977; Leibert et a l., 1973.) 16
For preschoolers it has been found that they can learn new aggres sive behaviors from as l i t t l e as a single exposure to a b rie f symbolic portrayal. Younger children in general have been found to be much more influenced by television violence than older children, probably because they are less completely socialized against performing aggres sive behavior. The same applies to boys in general and to children who are already more aggressive (Comstock et a l., 1978).
Television As a Source of Fro-Social Behavior
Research on pro-social uses of television is relatively young
(Comstock e t a l . , 1978). Present findings suggest that under certain conditions some children can and do learn "positive" behaviors from television viewing such as sharing (Bryan, 1970; Bryan & Walbeck,
1970), self-control (Stein & Bryan, 1970; Stein & Friedrich, 1972), and development of courage (Bryan & Schwartz, 1971; O'Connor, 1972;
Robinson, 1972). (Also see Comstock et a l . , 1978; Liebert et a l . ,
1973; Friedrich & Stein, 1973; Stein & Friedrich, 1975.)
Television As a Source of Consumer Behavior
Research on how children use television commercials is also in its infancy. Early findings suggest that children are influenced by television commercials as revealed by th e ir request fo r certain products. In a survey of mothers it was reported that almost three quarters of their children under six were influenced by television to ask that advertised products be bought (Howard, Hulbert, & Lehman,
1973, as cited in Comstock et a l . , 1978). Ward and Wackman (1972b) 17 in a survey of upper and middle class mothers,also found a high fre quency of children five years old asking for advertised products. In both studies, the two kinds of items most frequently requested were food and toys. Lyle and Hoffman (1976) report 87 percent of the mothers in th e ir survey report th e ir preschool children asked fo r food seen on television and 91 percent said their children asked for toys they saw on television . According to Ward and Wackman (1972), these requests tend to decrease with age. Goldberg and Gorn (cited in
Comstock et a l., 1978, p. 203) suggest that, based on their research with four and fiv e year olds, i t appears that television commercials encourage material, as opposed to social,orientations in children, that commercials may lead to c o n flic t with parents, and that exposure to commercials can lead to disappointment and unhappiness when products are not obtained.
Television As a Source of Communal A ctivities'
Watching television in the United States is very much a social or communal activity (see Foley, 1968; McCain, 1972; McQuail, Blumler,
& Brown, 1972), and i t is frequently done as a second a c tiv ity , e .g ., talking with spouse, eating while watching television (Comstock et a l . ,
1978). As children became older, they reported they spent less time watching television alone. Lyle and Hoffman (1976) reported that while seventeen percent of the three year olds said they viewed alone, eleven percent of the four year olds and six percent of the five year olds said they viewed alone. 18
While viewing television at home, the preschooler seldom sits hours on end transfixed in a zombie-like state in front of the tele vision screen. Instead, the child viewer is best described as active
(Anderson & Lorch, 1979; LoSciuto, 1972; Krull & Husson, 1979; Reid &
Frazer, 1978; Robinson, 1969). Children, as well as adults, have been observed to ta lk to the television set (Bechtel et a l . , 1972; J. R.
Brown, 1976; Lyle & Hoffman, 1972; Noble, 1975; Winick & Winick, 1979).
Six-year-old children in one study were observed to emit several d if ferent sounds while viewing entertainment fare, including noise when bored; screams of excitement at cartoons and violence in serials; laughter at comic situations; and "coos of pleasure" at particularly pleasing scenes (Field as cited in Winick & Winick, 1979, p. 26).
Many children did not s it in one place but frequently moved around and changed positions (Winick & Winick, 1979). Specific activities during television viewing included eating, playing with siblings or parents, playing with animals, playing with toys, games, cards, dressing and undressing, talking with people in the room, laughing, imitating what was being shown on the screen, dancing, clapping, singing along with commercials, singing songs within programs, etc. (Anderson & Lorch,
1979; Allen as cited in Comstock et a l . , 1978, p. 144; Liebert et a l . ,
1973; Noble, 1975; Winick & Winick, 1979).
When children talked during viewing,sometimes the talk was related to what was on the screen, and oftentimes it dealt with activities in the home, play activities, friends, etc. (Winick &
Winick, 1979). 19
A review of the relevant literature revealed that young children
used several kinds of ta lk while watching television . Based on the
findings reported, the following forms of television-based talk can be
hypothesized to exist in the speech of children:
1. talk that identifies action on the screen, e.g., "There's the bad guy again!"
2. talk that identifies the child's personal experiences with those on the screen, e.g., "I can do that!"
3. talk that recounts, e.g., "I've seen this before!"
4. talk that predicts, e.g., "I know what's going to happen n e x t."
5. talk that involves, e.g., "Did you see that, did you, did you?!" (see Winick & Winick, 1979, pp. 157-168).
6. talk that negotiates what programs are viewed (see Comstock et a l., 1978, pp. 156-159), including conflict.
7. talk that seeks information from parents and others to resolve ambiguous or complex message presentations (see Reid & Frazer, 1978).
8. talk that uses television to avoid the demands and requests of others, e.g., "I'm busy watching TV" (Reid & Frazer, 1978).
9. talk that brings others into the conversation related to television content (Reid & Frazer, 1978).
10. ta lk that imagines new scenes, makes up new endings, etc. (Noble, 1975).
Based on the previous discussion on television viewing and cogni tive development, it can further be hypothesized that use of these forms of ta lk can be related to the stage of cognitive development of the child speaker.
In summary, when young children watch television they watch with others,and they frequently talk and play with those around them? The talk of the preschooler may or may not be directly related to 20 television content.
Television As a Source of "Things To Talk About"
Several research projects have reported that children talk about television with family members and with friends (Allen, 1965; Bechtel et a l . , 1972; Brown et a l . , 1974, 1976; Comstock et a l . , 1978;
Epstein & Bolzer, 1976; Himmelweit et a l . , 1958; Greenberg, 1974;
Lyle & Hoffman, 1976; LoSciuto, 1972; Reid & Frazer, 1980; Schacter et a l . , 1974; Schramm e t a l . , 1961; Singer, 1977; von F e ilitz e n , 1976;
Winick & Winick, 1979). This use of television has frequently been included in the "social utility" category of mass media usage.
When children ta lk about television , they ta lk about television programs, television-reported news and special events, television characters and personalities, and the act itself of watching tele vision. Frequently this talking is done during actual television viewing. These specific speech acts have been discussed above.
The delayed use of television material in order to initiate or main tain conversation is the focus of this section.
J. R. Brown (1976) suggested that this delayed use of television material was just as important to children as it was to adults. He reported research on children seven years old in which they were queried about their use of television. Out of 13 possible uses, by far the most frequent use of television was as a source of things to ta lk about. When seven year olds were asked which gave them the most to talk about—friends, television, records and books—they over whelmingly answered television (Brown, 1974). Much of th is uses 21
research indicated that when compared to older children, younger
children reported television was more important to them than the
older children reported. While preschool children were not
included in this research, these findings indicated that talk
about television was very important to children by the time they
began th e ir formal education.
Other research with children seven years and older also supported
the importance of television as a source of things to ta lk about.
Greenberg (1974) reported the more often a child said he used tele
vision for a variety of other reasons, the more often the same child
expressed a strong desire to talk about television and said he did so
frequently. Winick and Winick (1979) also reported fo r children
seven to nine that talk about television characters was used widely
in social interactions. They further suggested talking about te le
vision characters at this age might be part of socialization and
group processes and the establishment of group bonds.
When it came to preschoolers, however, there was a paucity of
references to delayed use of television talk in the research, except
for citing children's frequent request for purchases of television
advertised food and toys. In light of this lack of information two questions emerged:
1. To what extent, if at a ll, do children under seven years old talk about television and television-based materials in non television-viewing situations?
2. In addition to observed ta lk , in what other delayed ways might the preschooler be using television-based materials in communicative interactions? 22
The obvious place to begin to get answers to these questions was to look at the "talk" of the preschooler as she or he engaged in the major activities shown during his or her third to fifth year of life including the ongoing patterns of spontaneous play and imaginative activity (Singer & Singer, 1978).
The following discussion will review research on the relation ship of preschool children’ s television viewing to th e ir spontaneous play.
Television As a Source of "Play"
Young children "play things they see on television." Evidence for this claim has been provided by children themselves, their par ents, and by trained observers and researchers (Bechtel et a l., 1972;
Brown, 1974; Caldeira, Singer, & Singer, n.d.; Comstock et a l., 1978;
Epstein & Bolzer, 1976; Gomberg, 1961; Lesser, 1977; Liebert et a l„ ,
1973; Lyle & Hoffman, 1972, 1976; Noble, 1975; Opie & Opie, 1959,
1969; Singer, 1973, 1977; Singer & Singer, 1977, 1978; Tower, Singer,
& Singer, 197 ; von Feilitzen, 1976; Ward, 1972; Winick & Winick,
1979; Winn, 1977). In this form of television-based play, the children used television characters and personalities, television con tent, and television themes to aid in their construction of play episodes or a c tiv itie s . The research which has addressed the use of television by young children in their play indicated that some demo graphic and situational variables appeared to be related to th is form of play. Also, i t appeared that the use of television-based materi als in this play constructively fulfilled several functions for the 23
preschooler. These areas of concern are addressed below.
Television is frequently used as a source of information fo r
dramatic and sociodramatic play. In these forms of play the element of "make-believe" or "pretending" is important. Children "pretend" to
be other people. They "pretend" that one object represents or is
another object (or that "nothing" is an object). And finally, they
"pretend" certain imaginary actions have occurred and that they are
in imaginary situations and locations. (See Smilansky, 1968.)
Gomberg (1961), in her study of 56 four-year-old children, noted
that over half of the children she observed used television heroes and television scripts and patterns of action and behavior in their play. For example, in play based on "Pop-eye" the four year olds used th e ir equipment in a set and stereotyped way; they walked and ran in a set manner, and th e ir phrases were exact replicas of "Pop- eye1 s." Gomberg reported that the play was heavily influenced by
"action" films and cartoons. The television-based roles assumed by the children in her study included "The Lone Ranger," "Mickey Mouse,"
"Pop-eye," "Superman," "Tonto," "Zorro," "Wild B ill Hickok," army men, television announcers and weathermen, puppets, etc. Gomberg also id e n tifie d a new game she labeled "watching te le v is io n ," where the children pretended to be watching television.
The Opies (1969) catalogued the games and play of 10,000 child ren ages six to twelve in England, Scotland and Wales. In th e ir now classic work they noted that television had impacted on the group of games they labeled "pretending games."J During th e ir discussion of one of the pretending games id en tified as "war games," they noted that 24
one variation , "Cowboys and Indians," was frequently named by the TV
programme of the moment, e .g ., Raw Hide, Wagon Train, Pony Express
(p. 340). They also noted television's influence on games that were
"mostly TV-inspired" such as "Cops and Robbers," "Highway Patrol"
(on bikes), "Russian Spies," and "Man from Uncle."
Others have also reported the television characters children
pretend to be in their play. Singer (1977) suggested three- and four-
year-old children especially drew on powerful figures for their fan
tasy play such as the "Bionic Man" and the "Bionic Woman," etc.
Epstein and Bolzer (1976), in th e ir survey of mothers, found that the
most popular fantasy figures reported were the "Six Million Dollar
Man" ("Bionic Man"), "Fonzie" from Happy Days, the "Cookie Monster"
from Sesame Street, and "Batman."
There has been only minimal discussion on how young children play
games based on these characters (and themes). Gomberg (1961) sug
gested the children play the games in a highly stereotyped manner.
By analyzing her examples and rewording her conclusions, television-
based play can be described as follows: a hero is selected (e.g.,
Lone Ranger), similar words that the hero uses are spoken (e.g., "Hi-
Ho, Silver"), and similar patterns of action and behavior that the
hero engaged in are observed (e .g ., riding a horse).
The Opies (1969) specifically reported that for older children
there are "rules" fo r playing pretending games. When younger children
such as infants and children five to seven years old played these same
games, the Opies suggested the play was more personal and less formalized. The descriptions of the pretending games provided by the 25
Opies were very general, e.g., "children make-believe they are other
people, or in other situations, and extemporize accordingly" (p.*XXV).
The basic format for the pretending game of "war" (under which the
Opies discussed television-based games) was that "children engage in
pretence battles, either against an imaginary enemy or an opposing
group of children" (p. xxxvi). The format for the TV-inspired "cops
and robbers" was "players on one side chase or seek the other side,
. . . rather than shoot them as in 'War Games'" (p. 340).
Specific or detailed description of the young children's pre
tending television-based games appeared to have been foregone in most
research because of its highly variable nature and format and/or
because i t was taken fo r granted that "everyone" knew (or remembered)
how the games were played. While the specific rules of television-
based play have frequently gone unreported, factors which affect this
play have been addressed in a small number of studies.
The sex and age of the children playing in addition to the loca
tion of play and objects available for play have been investigated
and found to be related to the nature of children's play.
Sex differences have been noted in terms of who plays tele v is io n -
based games as well as which characters the children pretended to be.
In almost all relevant studies, it was reported that boys engaged in
television-based games more frequently than did girls. Gomberg
(1961) reported that television-inspired play was evident in 80 per
cent of the boys in her sample and in only 50 percent of the sample as
a whole (cited in Noble, 1975). Von Feilitzen (1976) reported that findings based on mothers' observations indicated that Swedish boys 26
were influenced more frequently by adult programs in th e ir games and
behavior. These findings appeared to be consistent with reports that
historically young boys and girls have differing preferences for play
and games (see Sutton-Smith & Rosenberg, 1961; Hurlock, 1971 ). In
terms of what games or characters the children used, several
researchers noted that while g irls assumed the role of both male and
female characters, e.g., superhero figures, boys exclusively assumed
the role of male superhero figures (Caldeira et al., n.d.; Epstein &
Bolzer, 1976; Singer, 1977). In addition to these sex differences, age differences were also noted in television-based play.
Lyle and Hoffman (1976) reported that when children ages three
to five were asked whether or not they "played things they saw on television" with their friends, slightly over half indicated they did not. But there were d e fin ite age differences in these responses.
While 64 percent of the three year olds said they did not engage in such play, 61.5 percent of the five year olds said they did. So the older the preschool child was, the more lik e ly he or she would report television was used in his or her play. This was further supported by Singer and Singer (1978) who found age differences in the use of television-based play also to be consistent with cognitive development models of children's play, suggesting that dramatic or make-believe play increases as the preschool child gets older peaking at age seven or older (depending on the p articu lar th e o ris t).
F in a lly , i t has been noted that the location of play and the objects present may influence the television-based games enacted as well as play in general. Some games are more frequently played 27
outdoors p artic u la rly those requiring running and chasing, while
others are more frequently played indoors particularly those requiring
props that are stored inside (see Gomberg, 1961, p. 70; Hurlock, lg71 ,
p. 54).
Some researchers suggested that television-based play and talk
have certain consequences for its users or it provides various func
tions for its users including (1) aiding in peer interaction and
socialization, (2) aiding in the fulfillment of personal needs,
(3) developing more creative play, and (4) aiding in the development
of muscular coordination and language-use. Of course, these functions were not solely served by television-based play, but television-based
play could be one of the most important sources. Each of these functions is addressed below.
Children need common experiences from which they can base th e ir cooperative play or associative play and other forms of interactions.^
There are three main sources of these common experiences fo r young children. Family and home themes are among the most popular sources.
Next are themes based on professional people such as doctors, teachers, and policemen (see Smilansky, 1968). A th ird popular source of play characters and themes, not necessarily mutually exclusive with the above, is television. More commonly, especially in the play of young boys, knowledge of television-based themes may actually become a pre requisite to significant amounts of their play. Consequently, child ren who know the "rules" of television-based play may be the more successful interactants and those who do not know the rules may be
" le ft out." Noble (1975) summarized part of this concern stating: 28
As Piaget noted, prior to the age of six and seven years, under standing between children occurs only where there is contact between two identical modes of thought existing in each child. The egocentric child [under six years oldj cannot seek or find some basis in the other child's mind on which to build conversa tion or play unless they have experience in common. Television . . . appears to provide common experience which enhances the possibility of cooperative play. (p. 88)
As television-based play helps the preschool child in social
interactions, so, too, does it function in helping the child fu lfill
personal needs.
Children, like adults, have a variety of personal needs that can
be fu lf ille d by a variety of sources. Some of these needs, however,
d iffe r not only from those of the adults, but also probably d iffe r
with children in d iffe re n t stages of cognitive development. For
example Winick and Winick (1979) suggested one of the needs of the
four to six year old is to test one's independence, strength, and
levels o f mastery in order to v e rify powers. I t was at this point
the superpeople such as "Batman" and "Superman" appeared in th e ir play
and interests. Children here symbolically acted through these super
heroes in ways that satisfied these various developmental needs.
Another example of how television helped the developing child
f u l f i l l personal needs and in this case interpersonal needs as well was through the use of television-based play as described by J. R.
Brown (1976). He reported about a young boy who used television-based
play to overcome personal limitations and to negotiate rules and
roles in cooperative play with peers. In the former case the boy assumed the role of "Tarzan" which enabled him to climb a tree which always had been beyond his confidence. In the latter case, he and a 29 friend acted sequences from televised combat which helped the boys to "improve" and successfully play th e ir games of "war."
Use of television-based themes in play has also been found to be linked to increased creativity in play especially when an adult participates or intervenes in some prescribed method during the playing process (see Gomberg, 1961; Singer & Singer, 1978; Smilansky,
1968).
And finally, use of television-based play, as use of other forms of play, allows the child to develop and refine language-use skills, imaginative s k ills (which can lead to abstract thought s k ills ) and muscular coordination s k ills (see Hurlock,l971 ).
In summary, television is an important source of play materials and conversation materials for preschool children. In fa c t, in
American culture today the mythology of television may be the most important source of preschooler play formats supplanting other older, traditional sources of play (Singer, 1973). Many researchers have taken the importance of television-based materials by preschoolers in their talk and play for granted or the researchers have looked at limited forms of play, e.g. aggressive behavior or prosocial behavior.
A review of this literature revealed a need for more basic descrip tion and analysis of the television-based spontaneous play of young children not necessarily bound by adult theoretical constructs which may have little or no meaning to the young children. Overall, the review of this body of literature suggested there are s till many basic questions about how children use television in their play and ta lk which s t i l l need to be addressed fo r the f ir s t time or 30 readdressed. For example, what are the rangesand kinds of televisio n - based characters, plots, symbols, e tc ., used by young children? How are these television-based materials used by children of different ages? in d iffe re n t contexts? by males? females?
The above discussion explicated fiv e major communicative and social uses of television by young children. The uses included television as a source of (1) violent and aggressive behavior,
(2) prosocial behavior, (3) consumer behavior, (4) "things to talk about," and (5) play materials. Next, the theory and methodological strategies utilized in this study are addressed.
The Theoretical and Methodological Approach
The theoretical perspective which helped foster the asking of the present research questions was derived from ethnomethodology and phenomenology, symbolic interactionism , and the developing rules paradigm in communication theory. The methodological implications of the theoretical perspective adopted fo r th is study say that the research should be conducted from the perspective of the social actors, that human interaction and meaning were inextricable, that social organization was a consequence of human interaction and human interaction was rule-governed. It was further noted that the applica b ility of these theoretical assumptions to the behavior of children was problematic in lig h t of cognitive development theories.^
The methodological strategy identified to be most appropriate fo r answering these questions and other related questions and to be compatible with the theoretical perspective adopted was participant observation (see Bruyn, 1966 and Denzin, 1978).® It offered the
researcher the opportunity to observe behavior as it naturally occurred, to observe the social actor from his or her perspective, to discover what things were of importance to the social actor, and to follow up interconnections of observed phenomena (see Becker,
1961). Researchers using ethnomethodological, interactionism, and communication rules perspectives have found this method useful and compatible with th e ir theoretical assumptions (Anderson, Traudt,
Acker, Meyer, & Donahue, 1979; Denzin, 1973; Garfinkel, 1974; Lull,
1979).
One essential feature of participant observation that should be addressed before the formal research questions are presented is
"developing the research design." Unlike some other methodological procedures, participant observation is "deliberately unstructured in its research design as to maximize the discovery and v e rific a tio n of theoretical propositions" (Denzin, 1978, p. 184). Research questions, hence, can be altered and given new focus during the course of the research; hypotheses can be developed during the fie ld observations and during "in-field" data analysis; data-gathering instruments and analytical procedures can also be determined a fte r the research has form ally begun. The major advantage of th is feature of participant observation is that data, including that phenomenon which is socially relevant and meaningful to the social actor, helps determine the course of the research. 32
Statement of Research Problem and Research Questions
The concern of this study is that in order to develop a compre hensive understanding of the role of television in the lives of younger children, researchers must describe and analyze the television experience from data based on the child's perspective. This is already being done in the area of what children see when they watch televisio n . This same perspective now needs to be adopted when studying how young children use what they get from television in their communicative interactions, e .g ., talk and play. Hence, the child ren's perspective was of paramount importance to this study. The starting point for this research, then, was focusing on television- based material and related acts that were important and meaningful to the children. In recognition of this need the following research was conducted.
The natural setting selected for this study was a single day care center with a fairly non-structured summer schedule. There were several reasons for this decision. F irs t, the day care center was id e n tifie d as an environment to which the children under study were accustomed. Second, as a pragmatic concern, the day care setting was id e n tifie d as an environment which more and more children would be spending considerable amounts of time as more mothers entered and returned to the work force. Finally, this setting was selected because it provided the researcher with the opportunities to:
1. observe the children in several hours of spontaneous play with peers
2. observe children of different ages (three to seven years old), different races (Black and White), and both sexes 33
3. get to know the children, their routines, and become a part of their life worlds in an unobtrusive manner
4. talk with the children about their television perceptions and experiences
5. observe the children as they watched television
6. gain access to and talk to the children's parents about the role of television in their youngster's life
7. talk with the day care center teachers about their observa tions of the role of television in the children's lives and secure the teachers' cooperation in later stages of the study.
These seven opportunities afforded by the day care center environment also became the major research concerns of this study.
Stated more succinctly, the major research question was:
In what observable ways do young children use television and television-based materials in th e ir communicative interactions?
This question can be interpreted as follows. At the beginning of the field observations "observable ways" referred to acts the researcher observed the children doing while in the day care center.
During the course of the fie ld study, "observable ways" was also interpreted to include to a lesser extent what the parents and the day care center staff saw. Based on the field experiences, the term
"young children" was also expanded from including children four and five years old to including children three to seven years old with primary emphasis s till remaining on children four to five and six years old. "Television" referred to the physical presence of and the viewing of the television set. "Television-based materials" during the course of the research were specified to include (1) the identities, behaviors, speech patterns, and symbols associated with 34
fic tio n a l characters and real l i f e personalities who appeared on
television , and (2) themes, plots, and presentation formats from
television dramatic and comedy programs, news and ta lk shows, variety
programs, television movies, commercials, cartoons and non-cartoon
children shows, and (3) anything else whose source could be verified as television. "Communicative interactions" referred to situations
in which the children used "talk" or speech, nonverbal communication and play in the presence of other children and/or adults.
Minor research questions included:
1. What are the range and kinds of television-based materials used by the young children?
2. How are television-based materials used by children of different ages?
3. How are television-based materials used by males? by females?
4. How are television-based materials used by children in different contexts, e.g., inside vs. outside, television- viewing context vs. non-viewing context?
5. How do young children describe their uses of television and television-based materials?
6. How do parents describe their young children's uses of tele vision and television-based materials in non-day care center settings?
7. How do day care center teachers describe young children's uses of television and television-based materials in the day care center?
Chapter II follows and presents the specific methodological procedures developed and u tiliz e d in this study to answer the above questions. 35
Footnotes
Several structural and perceptual attributes of television programs have been reported to maintain and "recapture" the wandering attention of the preschool television viewer. Certain audio sounds such as weird noises, children's voices, music, and women's voices regain the attention of the preschooler. Certain visual techniques such as fa st cutting action, some forms of camera movement, other forms of editing techniques do the same (Anderson & Lorch, 1979; Krull & Husson, 1979; Lesser, 1974).
C ognitive development psychologists such as Buhler, Piaget, Isaacs, and Valentine generally agree on the existence of stages of play. Based on the writings of the above, SmiIansky (1968) describes four general stages in play including: (1) functional play which involves simple muscular a c tiv itie s where the child repeats actions, manipulates objects; (2) constructive play where the child manipu lates objects to construct or create something; (3) dramatic play where an imaginary situation is substituted for the "real" situation and where the highest level of this form of play requires two or more players who interact and have some verbal interaction related to the play; and (4) games-with-rules where the players accept a set of pre-arranged rules.
^The Opies (1969) described some eleven to twelve general cate gories of games including "pretending games." They reported eight different kinds of pretending games including "mothers and fathers," "playing school," and "road accidents."
^Children have been observed to engage in at least three differ ent kinds of play based on their interaction or lack of interaction with others. These forms of play include (1) solitary play where the child plays alone, (2) parallel play where the child plays in the presence of other children, but interaction is not a necessary part of their play, and (3) associative play where children depend on each other and interaction to accomplish th e ir play (see Parten, 1932; Rubin, Maioni, & Hornung, 1976).
small number of in te ra c tio n is t and ethnomethodological researchers who have studied children in natural settings have questioned the v a lid ity o f trad itio n al cognitive developmental in te r pretations about how young children interact with others. Specifical ly, they question the claim that preschool children can only engage in egocentric conversations and cannot engage in cooperative or associative play. The limited body of research supporting this view suggests that children above the age of three have many more s k ills than are usually attributed to them including the ability to take account of one another in reciprocal terms, reason, construct elaborate games, inherit and develop their own cultures and social 36 organizations, and develop their own sets of conversation rules which they continue to change and modify (see Denzin, 1973; Joffee, 1973; Mackay, 1974).
^Recently similar theoretical perspectives and participant observation have been successfully used in other related forms of mass communication research (see Anderson et a l . , 1979; Frazer, 1976; Lull, 1979). CHAPTER I I
THE METHOD
Participant observation was the dominant research method used in this study. As discussed e a rlie r , an e x p lic it assumption in p a rtic i pant observation is that the use of any pre-data collection research design is problematic such that once the field research has begun the research design developed prior to data collection may be used as is , altered, or completely discarded. A second assumption important to this method is that data analysis begins during the data collection period. The results of this "in-field" analysis has definite conse quences for the remaining data collection period. A final important assumption of this method has to do with the focus of the study. The specific focus of the study including hypotheses to be tested and specific research questions also emerge during the course of data collection and "in-field" data analysis.
The discussion below presents the methodological decision making and the resulting emerging focus of this research. Specifi cally, the following areas are discussed: (1) overview of factors affecting decision-making, (2) selection of the day care center,
(3) selection of subjects, (4) selection of procedures fo r data col lection, and (5) procedures for data analysis. When applicable, relevant pre-data collection research plans are presented and com pared to actual strategies used.
37 38
Overview of Factors Affecting Decision-Making
Methodological decision-making occurred prior to and during the data collection period of this study. The researcher consulted with her adviser on most decisions that led to deviations from the original research design. For example, when emerging patterns were detected during the "in-field" data analysis, frequently the researcher and her adviser discussed the patterns and negotiated changes in the re search design. Overall, methodological decision-making in this re search resulted from the researcher and her interaction with the pre data collection research design which included a review of relevant literature, her adviser and dissertation committee, the social actors at the center selected and the social setting of the center selected.
One of the firs t major pre-data collection activities was to identify and decide on a day care center to be used in this study.
This a c tiv ity is addressed below.
Selection of the Day Care Center
Because a small sample was designated in the pre-data collection research design, only one day care center in Columbus, Ohio, with television in its daily program was selected for the study. Of the seven centers contacted by phone and agreeing to a personal visit with the researcher, fiv e centers consented to participate in the study. One refused due to the time comm'tment the researcher re quested of the centers. Another gave a conditional refusal suggesting in a month they could probably participate. Each center was provided with a written explanation of the project and a sample letter and 39 permission form to be sent home to the parents (see Appendix A).
The day care centers ranged in child populations from 28 to one hundred. The factors used fo r selecting the center were (1) i f , when, and how much the children viewed television during the day at the center, (2) the size of the center, and (3) whether or not the child population was racially mixed. The preference of the researcher was a center that allowed television viewing on a regular basis, a center with a child population that was large enough to provide a sufficient choice of subjects within the desired age range, but not necessarily having over thirty children in this age range, and a center with both
Black and White children.
Of the two centers that met the criteria, the one selected for the study seemed to have a more cooperative staff. In particular, this staff seemed to be excited about the project and were willing to personally aid in securing parental permission for children to partici pate in the research project. Also the physical design of the build ing was subjectively more comfortable to-the researcher. In terms of the original criteria for selection, this center allowed the children to watch television three times a day although most of the children only watched once a day during the summer. The total child population was between 50 and 60-, with approximately 20 in the desired age range and this population was ra c ia lly mixed.
Once the researcher entered the field , an important activity was to identify potential subjects. Selection of Subjects
Primary Sub.iects
The pre-data collection research design recommended that four to eight children with a maximum of twelve be selected as primary sub jects. They were to be four and five years old and parental permis sion was required for them to participate in the study.
The firs t step in the actual selection process was identifying which children were four and five years old. These data were provided by the director of the day care center. Next, based on initial obser vations and interactions with four-and five-year-old children, the researcher identified several potential primary subjects and permis sion letters were sent home to their parents. In addition to the four- and five-year-old children, there were three six-year-old children who spent a lo t of time around the researcher and enjoyed talking to her. They also frequently played with the five-year-old children.
Since there were many references to them in the fie ld notes and th e ir talk was on the audio tapes, permission letters were also sent to their parents. The researcher sought permission for these six-year- old children to participate in the study so she could have the option of adding these children to the research design.
When the parents returned the permission letters, the researcher seriously began considering a child as a primary subject. For parents who had not returned the permission letters after a certain period of time, reminder letters were sent to them and the director of the day care center personally requested that the letters be returned.
Only one parent initially refused to let her child participate in the 41
study, but after she talked to the researcher, she consented.
Problems that hampered the selection process included some
children leaving the center without prior notification* some children
going on vacation with their parents without prior notification, and
some children simply not coming to the center on a regular, predic
table basis.
In spite of these absences, data were collected on all the
children temporarily selected as primary subjects. This activity was
possible because all these children played, talked and ate together.
The next stage in the selection process of primary subjects was the
children's interviews.
During the first segment of the two part children's interview, all of the potential primary subjects were interviewed except for one
child who was extremely shy with the researcher and all other adults at the center except his mother. At this time a formal decision was made to include two six-year-old children in the primary subject cate gory and these two children were also interviewed.
The completion of the second part of the children's interview by the children and the completion of the parent interview by one of the children's parents enabled the researcher to classify those children as primary subjects. Eleven children met these requirements. Origi n ally i t was believed the age range of these children was from four to six years old; however, during the parent interviews, the researcher discovered one child who had been reported to be four was instead three years old. The researcher was not surprised by this finding due to the s im ila rity of this c h ild 's behavior to younger children. The 42 next group of subjects identified were the secondary subjects.
Secondary Subjects
A second group of subjects was developed for the purposes of this research in the pre-data collection research design. They were to be those children who interacted with the primary subjects. During the course of this research, however, the d efin itio n was changed. In ad dition to having interacted with the primary subjects, these children now had to meet one of two other requirements. The firs t requirement specified that children who were originally considered as primary subjects, but who were not available to complete the second part of the children's interview due to absences at the center, became secon dary subjects. The second requirement specified that children not originally considered as eligible to be primary subjects, but who requested to be interviewed and were subsequently interviewed at the end of the interview period also became secondary subjects. The researcher included this latter group of children for two reasons.
The firs t was that these additional interviews provided additional data for helping interpret the children's culture and the role of television in this culture. The second reason was that the researcher did not want those children who requested to be interviewed to feel
"left out." The interview was a "fun" and "special" thing to do for the children. These children ranged in age from three to seven. The number of secondary subjects totaled eight. 43
Tertiary Subjects
A new category of subjects was added to the original research
design. Labeled te rtia ry subjects, these were children at the center who were observed in a variety of a c tiv itie s , but who were not in te r
viewed. These children ranged in age from three to seven years old.
There were seventeen te rtia ry subjects.
In summary, the subjects in this study were children three to
seven years old who attended a day care center in a suburb o f Columbus,
Ohio. The subjects were divided into three groups: 11 primary sub jects who were observed in natural settings, who completed both parts of the children's interview and who had one parent who was interviewed; eight secondary subjects who were observed in natural settings and who completed only the f ir s t part of the children's interview; and 17 tertiary subjects who were observed in natural settings. The primary focus was on the children four and five years old.
Selection of Procedures for Data Collection
The pre-data collection research design identified three major stages of data collection relevant to this study. These included
(1) a pre-observational period, (2) an observational period, and
(3) an interview period. How each of these stages emerged is dis cussed below. The specific methods of data collection used during these stages are also addressed.
Pre-observational Period
The pre-observational period was used to help the researcher be come more aware of critical variables that might become important 44 during the course of this research in the natural environment of the day care center. If the researcher had fe lt it necessary, modifica tions were to have been made in the original research design. No major modifications were made. This pre-observational period was ap proximately 23 hours, covering seven days, at five different day care centers. The bulk of this pre-observation time was spent at the cen ter selected for the study. The pre-observation period occurred during May 1977. Field notes were the instruments of data collection.
Observational Period
Data collection during the observational period occurred during the months of June and July in 1977. What was previously designated as a formal observational period ( i . e . , fie ld notes and audio tapes used), covered a fiv e week period (15 days, approximately 90 hours).
In fa c t, however, the researcher collected fie ld notes the entire time she was in the fie ld which covered a nine week period. To supplement the field notes, audio taped recordings of the children's talk were also collected beginning during the middle of the formal observational period. Video tapes were used on one day near the end of the fie ld study, and the results from analyzing the video tapes are to be pre sented in a future report.
Field notes. According to the original research design, field notes taken during the observation stage of data collection were to include the following information:
1. Who the social actors are a t the day care center; what back ground information is available. What labels or membership category devices are in use and help explicate the 45
relationships social actors have among themselves? What makes individual social actors unique?
2. What are important features of the social setting? What are important objects used by the social actors? tihat are impor tant places of social interaction? Where do observations take place?
3. What are important time orientations to be considered? What are the important time-related events the social actors use to structure and punctuate their activities? What dates and times is the researcher in the field?
4. How are social interactions constructed by the social actors? What are the main activities of the social interactants, e .g ., watching te le v is io n , playing, eating lunch? What speech or language is used? What nonverbal gestures and spatial orientations are used? What are the rules of con duct in operation?
5. What is the researcher's experience in the field? How does the researcher become a natural part of the culture studied? What impact does the researcher's field experience have on the data collected? The social meanings attributed to that data? How are social meanings confirmed? How does the researcher learn the symbolic forms of language which bear upon the social meanings of the study? (See Bruyn, 1966; Denzin, 1978; Lofland, 1971; Speier, 1973.)
These items constituted the content of the researcher's field notes.
S p ecifically, in terms of social actors, most of the notes taken were on the children eligible to be primary subjects. The heaviest note taking occurred in the social settings where the following forms of social interaction took place: free play, watching television, and eating lunch. The settings previously stipulated for observing were
"structured activities" (e.g., arts and crafts, story time), "non structured activities" (e.g., free play), and while watching tele vision. When the researcher entered the field , the day care center was on its summer schedule which fo r a ll practical purposes included very little , if any,"structured" arts and crafts activities. 46
Story-telling was a very infrequent activity. Consequently, eating lunch was identified as a regularly occurring activity which could potentially replace "structured activities" in the original research design.
Observing lunch time behavior and ta lk , however, quickly became problematic. The setting where lunch was eaten made note-taking while the children ate lunch extremely difficult. The noise level was so distracting that individual conversations and talk were frequently rendered inaudible to the researcher. Consequently, talk during lunch was excluded as a major setting for analysis. The major settings then included free play and watching television only. During the early stages of observation,the heavier emphasis was on during television viewing behavior; during the later stages of observation,the emphasis shifted to non-viewing behaviors during free play.
Within the free play activity time two major forms of interaction were observed: talking and playing. Frequently, the children's "talk" was only audible to the researcher when adults were intentionally included or addressed by the children,, The researcher included this child-adult interactions in the field notes. The "talk during play" was the primary source of child-child interactions. The children were much less likely to include adults in these forms of interactions.
During note taking, this la tte r form of interaction took precedence over the former.
As originally planned, the researcher biased the field notes to include any talk or play that used television-based materials. When ever there was any doubt about the content of the ta lk or play being 47
television-based, the researcher recorded that material and when pos
sible, at a later time, asked the social actors for an interpretation
of the activities observed.
Based on the direction of the fie ld notes and the accompanying
"running analysis" of those notes, the emerging focus of the study,
then, centered on the television-based games or play and the tele
vision-based talk of young children in both viewing and non-viewing
contexts.
The heaviest note-taking occurred during free play in the
morning, during Sesame Street when i t was watched, play a fte r nap
time, during Mickey Mouse, and during the firs t few minutes of Star
Trek which came on after Mickey Mouse.
Field notes were taken every day the researcher was in the
fie ld between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Depending on the use or other
forms of data collection and the activity of the children, the actual
amount of field notes taken on a given day varied considerably.
The researcher took approximately 400+ pages of field notes.
Additional notes were generated from two additional sources:
(1) notes taken as the researcher expanded on and c la rifie d notes
taken in the f ie ld , and (2) notes taken from the audio tapes. The
audio tapes are discussed below.
Audio tapes. Audio tapes, as previously planned, were used during the observation period to provide supplementary data to the field notes, e.g., examples of verbatim language-use. The settings originally designated for audio recording were free play, television 48 watching, and the structured activity which at this point was lunch time. Once in the field, this strategy was altered. Free play was maintained as an a c tiv ity for recording; however, lunch time recordings and television viewing recordings had to be re-evaluated as appropriate settings for this form of data collection. In both situa tions, making recordings with intelligible speech and talk became a major problem due to the background noise--children's voices during lunch and the sound of the television during television viewing. The use of la v a lie r microphones (microphones that hang around the neck) and table microphones were used in an attempt to overcome the noise problem. These microphones, however, were too obtrusive in the natural setting and their use was later discontinued. Lunch time recordings were terminated completely. Television viewing recordings were continued, even though large segments of the tapes were sometimes difficult to understand. The rationale for continuing to record during television viewing was that this was an activity of direct importance to the focus of the study and-consequently whatever in te l ligible talk recorded was potentially useful and hence worth attempting to collect. Thirty hours of tape-recorded interactions were collected.
In summary, the observational period was expanded to be in effect the entire time the researcher was in the field. Methods of data collection included field notes, audio tapes and video tapes. In addition to observational data, interview data was also collected.
A discussion of this data follows. 49
Interview Period
The original research design specified that the children and their parents be interviewed about the children’s use of television.
Once in the field, the researcher decided to also include the teachers among those to be interviewed because of the storehouse of information the teachers had on children and play. The teacher in terviews also provided another reliability/validity check for the researcher. Each of these interview situations is addressed below.
The children's interview. The children's interview was to in clude traditional children and television questions covering tele vision consumption, preferences, perceived re a lity , comprehension and understanding, and use of television in talk and play.
A questionnaire was developed fo r use in the interview at the end of the formal observation period (see Appendix B).
The researcher used the field notes to aid in selecting, focusing and constructing the interview questions for this questionnaire.
Questions about television-based play usually, but not always, referred to television-based play observed at the center.
The children's interview was formally divided into two parts.
Part I covered consumption, preferences, perceived re a lity and te le vision-based play and ta lk . Part I I covered comprehension and under standing of two fiv e minute segments each of Sesame S treet, Mickey
Mouse, and Scooby Poo. Three weeks prior to the interviews, episodes of these programs were recorded o ff the a ir . The Sesame Street program and Mickey Mouse were edited to include segment formats that 50 had been observed to be popular with the children and to include seg ments that were expected to be less popular. The Scooby Poo segments were shown in natural sequence. Part I and Part I I of the interviews were conducted on d iffe re n t days.
Part I of the interview averaged 35 to 45 total minutes. Not all interviews were done in one s ittin g . When a child became restless, the interviewer temporarily stopped asking questions. Unfortunately, these interviews were conducted during a heat wave, and the building was uncomfortable and hot. Part II of the interview was usually completed in one s ittin g . The average length of this part of the in terview, excluding viewing the three ten-minute television program segments, was 15 minutes.
For the primary subjects, both parts of the interview were audio recorded. For secondary subjects who completed Part I , some were audio-taped and some were coded directly onto a questionnaire.
The parent interview. In the pre-data collection design the parent interview was to be a telephone interview including questions about the child's television consumption at home, the parent's per ception of the child's television preferences, and the child's tele vision-based play, talk, clothes and toys. This interview was con ducted as planned.
The parent questionnaire was developed during the children's interview period. The questions the parents were asked were similar to the questions the children were asked (see Appendix C). 51
For the interview, the researcher requested to speak to the parent who knew the most about the child's television viewing be havior. In all cases this parent was the mother. The parents in the firs t three interviews voluntarily made distinctions between summer and winter television viewing. All other parents were asked if they cared to make that distinction if they did not suggest it themselves.
These interviews lasted 20 to 30 minutes.
The teacher interview. The decision to formally interview the teachers was made after the children and most of the parents had been interviewed. This was not in the original research plan. This decision was made in part because some of the teachers had on occasion reported television-based play and talk they had observed while working at the center. Since the teachers were a significant part of the child's life in the day care center, the additional information the teachers could provide on the children was viewed to be potentially very useful.
The teacher interview was divided into two parts (see Appendix D).
Part I covered the play of the children in general and the televisio n - based play of the children three years and older. All teachers par ticipated in Part I which lasted from 15 to 20 minutes.
The four teachers who watched television most frequently with the children were asked to fill out a closed ended questionnaire (Part II) which focused on the television-based play and talk of each of the primary subjects and on the during-televisi on-viewing behavior of each of the primary subjects. 52
In summary, procedures for data collection included an observa
tion period and an interview period. During the observation period
the methods of data collection included field notes, audio-tapes, and
video-tapes. The interview period included the use of three differ
ent questionnaires in interviews with the children, their parents, and
the day care center teachers. The researcher spent approximately 48
hours conducting interviews. The total time the researcher spent in
the field was approximately 166 hours.
A discussion of the procedures u tiliz e d during data analysis is addressed next.
Procedures fo r Data Analysis
Two major forms of data, field notes and interview notes, were collected and analyzed. The procedures fo r analyzing each form of data are presented below.
Field Notes and Observational Data
Data collection and data analysis did not e n tire ly occur at two separate, distinct points in time. Instead, in-field data analysis began early in and continued throughout the data collection period.
Post-field data analysis continued several months after the official data collection period ended.
In-field data analysis. The in-field data analysis began with a search through the fie ld notes fo r any behavior that might be con strued as television-based. These behaviors included talk, play, use of media-based clothes, shoes, toys, lunch boxes, towels, etc. This 53 search also involved selecting information that described various com ponents of the social system, e.g., social actors, social objects, etc. More specifically, this data analysis included (1) rewriting, adding to, interpreting, and organizing these field notes, (2) gener ating tentative hypotheses, and (3) further refining the focus of the study.
While the fie ld notes were preserved in th e ir original form, i t was necessary to interpret, organize, and react to those notes. In terpreting involved the researcher rereading the notes, rewriting some notes, and adding additional data that may have been excluded in the original set of notes. Next, rewritten materials were placed in separate folders for the purpose of developing an organized filing system that would allow quicker retrieval of certain specific kinds of information. Specifically, notes on the children identified as poten tial primary subjects were placed in separate folders labeled with the children's names. Notes on media-based clothing and other parapher nalia that the children brought to the center were recorded and file d .
Later, notes on other aspects of the social system as well as informa tion about what would later be identified as television-based games and ta lk were also file d and/or indexed in the original notes fo r future reference.
Along with rewriting, indexing, and filing notes was the activity of describing the researcher's actions and reactions during the data collection process. This information was also indexed and/or filed.
Two major results of the in-field data analysis were the genera tion of tentative sets of hypotheses or rules that could be verifie d 54
or disconfirmed and the ultimate focusing of the study.
The in it ia l set of fie ld notes were found to contain what appeared
to be evidence of patterned behavior. To verify, modify, or discon-
firm the existence of these patterns or rule-governed behavior,
informal hypotheses or rules were formulated. Future observations
re-examined these sets of patterned behaviors. Most hypotheses
received support from the additional observations. Other hypotheses
required additional modification. None had to be totally discarded.
The activity of generating hypotheses and verifying or supporting
those hypotheses continued throughout the study.
Another method u tiliz e d to v e rify and modify hypotheses about
observed behavior was to c o llect additional data through interviews
with the children themselves about th eir behaviors, e .g ., informally
asking a child who had been observed playing "Batman" how to play
"Batman." In addition to the informal querying, specific questions
about "Batman" and other TV-based games were asked during the formal
interviews with all primary subjects, their parents, and the day care center teachers.
The second major result of the in-field data analysis was the con
tinued focusing of the study. At the outset of the study, the focus was on television-based behavior in general. During the course of the research, however, the focus became more specific and i t shifted.
The early in-field focus was more on behavior during television viewing behavior; as the study moved into the interview period the focus shifted to the use of TV-based material in the children's play in the non-viewing context. This la te r focus on TV-based play was also 55 t
reflected in the formal interviews.
Hence, while the fie ld notes ric h ly revealed data on the social
class, social setting, and during TV-viewing behavior, the interviews
in combination with the fie ld notes provided much of the data on non
viewing play.
Post-field analysis. At the completion of the data collection
period, over twenty propositions had been formulated and supported.
These propositions were about television-based behavior in both the
viewing and non-viewing contexts.
One of the early stages of post-field data analysis involved
organizing and reorganizing the final set of field notes and then
indexing the content, e.g., assigning each page of notes a number and
then developing a subject index with a listing of all pages that had
notes and discussions relevant to that topic.
Another early step in the post-field data analysis involved a
"grand sweep" writing about the social actors, the setting, the time orientations, and the researcher's data collection and personal exper
iences in the center. A grand sweep writing involved including every
thing that might be remotely considered in the final report and doing
that w riting in a small number of "marathon" sessions. A combination of grand sweep and a series of detailed outlines were used for the discussion of television-based play and talk. This resulted in the furth er additions of new hypotheses and propositions as well as the refinement and modification of existing hypotheses and propositions.
The grand sweep w riting style was adopted at this point to preserve as 56 much information as possible (including that information which s till may not have been committed to notes) and to take a " fir s t stab" at a possible organizational scheme for presentation of the data. Another reason for adopting the grand sweep style was because the researcher anticipated an extended time period of several months between that point in time and the time when the final analysis would be completed.
The next stages of analysis, which covered a period of 40 months, involved experimenting with different ways to present the data and additional reviews of the literature on current research on children and television and on research about children's play. This last area of research was deemed important because of the heavy focus on play during the later stages of the study. Also, during this period, audio tapes were listened to and indexed.
The final analysis scheme for observational data involved selec ting, omitting, and condensing the presentation of data on the social actors, the social setting and researcher's experiences. Next, it involved re-reviewing all pertinent information about TV-based topics.
In particular i t involved looking at developmental and sex patterns and trends in the data. It also included a decision to exclude any analysis and discussion on non TV-based play and talk in this report.
Finally, this analysis resulted in developing even more proposi tions, refining existing propositions, developing detailed outlines, and then writing what was considered to be a good,defensible, analytic description of that data. This last writing also involved utilizing previously selected examples, some previously w ritten analyses, and maintaining short time periods of distancing from the materials. 57
The analysis of field notes, then, was a thematic activity which selectively emphasized the use of television and television-based materials in the children's culture„ The in-field analysis on during-
TV-viewing behavior was re la tiv e ly completed before the formal in te r view period. The in-field analysis on delayed TV behavior continued throughout the entire study, with heavier emphasis just prior to the interviews. The post-field analysis emphasized both contexts and excluded play and talk that was not identified as television-based.
In terms of problems during the data analyses, one of the main problems was that the field notes sometimes generated information that was d if f ic u lt to categorize. For example, the children's natural ta lk revealed that they had developed a perceived re a lity of television that adults did not share. For the purpose of analysis, in this illustration, the specific content was included in a discussion on children's perception about television, and a generalized formulation about this content was presented in the discussion on how children used TV in viewing and non-viewing context.
Another problem was that the researcher did not have s u fficien t resources to systematically analyze the audio and video tapes. The decision was made to totally exclude the video tapes from this study.
The audio tapes, on the other hand, were listened to for some v e r if i cation and clarification activities. It was ultimately decided to also use the audio tapes in an analysis subsequent to this study. 58
Interview Notes Analysis
Three d iffe re n t sets of respondents were interviewed. Their responses were recorded on questionnaires in all cases except the firs t part of the teachers' interview and the second part of the children's interview. Both of the latter interviews were instead recorded in a notebook.
Most of the responses were then used to develop a large chart allowing fo r cross comparison of information from at least two or three sources (e .g ., c h ild , parent, teacher) about each primary sub ject. In particular this was done with preferences and consumption data, and some data on play. In these areas most of the comparisons were between parents and children.
From this large chart, several tables were developed. In par tic u la r, many of the tables reported the data in terms of developmental and sex patterns, sim ilarities, and differences. In some tables the programs watched and preferred and watched were categorized into fiv e different kinds, e.g., cartoons, adult action adventure, etc.
In addition to the large chart, smaller charts were developed on each major TV-based game id e n tifie d (see Appendix E). In this chart, information on who played the games, how the games were played by those of differing ages and sexes, how the games were played in d if ferent contexts with different props at different times of the year was recorded. Four sources of data were used in the development of these charts including children, parent, and teacher reports as well as some observational data. 59
Other forms of interview data such as that on perceived reality were content analyzed u tiliz in g a question-by-question procedure and the resulting categories of responses were then examined for age and/ or sex related patterns, sim ilarities, and differences.
The results from this research are reported in the following four chapters. CHAPTER I I I
RESULTS I: THE SOCIAL ACTORS, THE SOCIAL SETTING,
THE CHRONOLOGY OF DAILY ACTIVITIES, AND THE
RESEARCHER'S EXPERIENCES AND SOCIALIZATION
This chapter describes the social actors at the day care center, the social setting of the center, a "typical" day at the center, and the researcher's experiences in that setting during the data-collection process.
The Social Actors
At the day care center several d iffe re n t membership groups were present and had corresponding labels. From the social actors' per spectives, the membership categories that existed were (1) the teachers, (2) the parents, (3) the babies, (4) the toddlers, (5) the preschoolers, and (6) the big kids.
The "teachers" included all adult women who were at the center for several hours during the day on a regular basis. The "parents" included a ll adults who appeared at the day care center fo r b rie f periods as they le ft and picked up children. The "babies" were the children who were not yet walking and slept in cribs and were taken care of by one specific teacher, Miss Jane. The "toddlers" were the children one and two years old and were taken care of by Miss Pam.
60 61
The "preschoolers" were the children three and four years old, and they were frequently called the "nappers" because they a ll had to take naps in the afternoon. The "big kids" were the children five, six, and seven years old. Included in this group were some children who also were included in the "nappers" group, some children known as
"kindergarteners" because they "got to go to kindergarten" and the others were known as "first graders" because these children "got to go to first grade."
The social actors who were the focus study in this research were the preschoolers and the big kids. In addition to these children, the teachers were also important to this study because of their frequent interactions with the primary subjects and the infor mation about the children they shared with the researcher.
In the discussion below,the teachers, the children, and their respective cultures are presented. While the teachers and their culture are treated very b rie fly , the children are discussed in d e ta il.
Also, in the following discussion the preschoolers are sometimes referred to as the younger children and the big kids are sometimes referred to as the older children.
The Teachers
All the staff members were identified as "teachers" by the children. When the children talked to the staff, they usually used the t i t l e "Miss" which preceded the s ta ff member's f ir s t name. The staff members at the center included Miss Jane, Miss Pam, Miss Marty,
Miss Michele, Miss Lydia, Miss J i l l , Miss Suzi, and Miss Ellen. Miss 62
Cheryl, the owner of the center could also be included, but she was seldom at the center during the course of the field study.
The s ta ff ranged in age from 21 to 48 years old. A ll had at least a high school degree,and two were working on college and tech nical school degrees. All were White,and four had children of their own who attended the day care center at no cost.
Each s ta ff member had specific assignments at the center. These assignments included working in p articu lar locations in the center and working with p articu lar age groups. Five of the teachers were full-tim e and three were part-time.
As is the case in many social systems, some s ta ff members were friends and socialized with each other. Other staff members rarely communicated with other staff members unless it dealt with the children or the center.
The Children
The eleven children upon which most of this research was based ranged in age from three to six years old; most of the subjects were four and five years old. Five were girls and six were boys, and they all attended a day care center in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. Of the eleven, one was Black and the rest were White. These subjects are identified in Table 1 with their ages at the beginning of the study, their sex, and race. The names reported in the table and in the following discussions are not the children's real names. In addition to these eleven primary subjects, another twenty-five children iden tifie d as secondary and te rtia ry subjects also contributed to this 63
TABLE 1
DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION ON THE PRIMARY SUBJECTS
Name Sex Age Race
Marcie F 3 yrs 10 mos White
Kay F 4 yrs 7 mos White
Alan M 4 yrs 5 mos White
Chip M 4 yrs 6 mos Wh i te
Mi tch M 4 yrs 7 mos White
Donnie M 4 yrs 7 mos Black
Holly F 5 yrs 4 mos White
J ill F 5 yrs 5 mos White
Bobby M 5 yrs 1 mos White
Melissa F 6 yrs - mos White
Chuckie M 6 yrs 5 mos White 64 study prim arily through th e ir interactions with the primary subjects and with the researcher. The secondary and te rtia ry subjects ranged in age from three to seven years old.
The day care center clientele were mostly lower-middle- and middle-middle-class families. Most of the parents of the primary subjects were high school graduates. At least four of the mothers had some post high school training or college experience. Five of the eleven subjects lived with only one parent and six lived with at least one sister or brother.
This demographic information presented, of course, cannot describe the unique and special characteristics of each of the primary subjects.
Nor does demographic information id e n tify the unique position each child occupied within the social structure and culture of the children's world at the center. In order for the reader to begin to understand and appreciate the diversity each primary subject contri buted to this study, a brief description of each child is offered.
These descriptions are based upon the observer's notes and comments from the subjects themselves, other children, parents, and teachers.
Marcie. Marcie was the youngest of the primary subjects. At three years old she frequently played alone and on occasion asked the teachers to "Watch this!" as she ran or jumped off the jungle gym and shouted a name lik e " Is is ." Sometimes she joined in the play with two other three-year-old girls and together they teased four-year-old Alan so he would chase them. Marcie had a younger and an older s is te r who attended the center. The teachers reported Marcie's family was composed of "yours, mine and ours." The parents brought children into the 65
relationship from previous marriages plus they and their own children.
At least one teacher suggested that was why Marcie played "Brady
Bunch" house. Marcie was a very cooperative, pleasant child.
Kay. Kay was a quiet four year old. The teachers confessed they
seldom noticed i f Kay was around or what she was doing. She did not
come to the center every day, but when she did she usually cried for
the firs t few minutes--at least until her mother was out-of-sight.
Later, Kay would seek out Chip and the two of them would disappear
into one of their private areas and play "Captain Marvel and Isis" and
talk. While generally quiet and somewhat withdrawn at the center, Kay
was described by her mother as being ta lk a tiv e and very outgoing with
other children. Kay's parents had recently been divorced.
Alan. Alan was four years old. He tended to be a l i t t l e bossy
with both the children and the teachers. When he played, he was fre
quently in areas where teachers were seldom present. His playmates
included other four-year-old boys and the three-year-old girls. Of
note was when he played with the boys he usually played television-
based games. In these games he always wanted to be the lead character,
e .g ., in the game of "Batman" Alan had to be Batman and not Robin.
When he played with the g irls he often became a monster who chased the
g irls . I t was not unusual to see Alan engaged in so lita ry play
walking, running, swinging on the rope and making "Tarzan jungle
cries." During this study his parents separated, and fo r awhile he would only answer people if they called him by his father's name. 66
Chip. Chip was four, well-behaved and "cute enough to be a g ir l" according to the teachers. Although not a d aily attender at the center, when he was there he played with other four-year-old boys and four-year-old Kay. Chip liked to play television-based games about firemen and policemen and "Captain Marvel." Known fo r his quick, bright smile, Chip also had a younger brother who attended the center.
Mitch. Mitch was a small, cheerful, almost-dainty four year old.
He frequently played by himself or he played "dress-up" with the three- year-old girls and two of the four-year-old boys. He also enjoyed talking to adults if he could get their attention, but he seldom seemed successful at doing this. This difficulty was in part probably because i t took a l i t t l e while fo r an adult to understand what he was trying to say. Two things in particular were unique about Mitch. One was that he liked to ta lk about "Mickey Mouse." Other children did not ta lk about "Mickey Mouse" nearly as often as Mitch did. The second was that,unlike other boys, Mitch liked to pretend he was female television characters when he played. His father wondered if he should be concerned. Some of his teachers were concerned.
Donnie. Donnie was the sweetheart of the teachers and a dare- devil-almost-bully to the children. At four years old he was "cute,"
"cuddly" and he knew no fear as he climbed over doors and hung upside down on high bars. He swang higher than any other child on the swings, and frequently he jumped on the big wheel tricycle and raced wildly over the playground. With his hearty laugh tra ilin g him wherever he went, Donnie was almost always in motion. When he was bored, angry or 67 wanted attention, he would hit another child and walk away looking over his shoulder for a reaction. Seldom did the children retaliate.
Donnie played with other four- and five-year-old boys and the older g ir ls . With the boys he played physical games and rode the big wheels. With Melissa and J i l l , he played boxed games and would often fuss and disagree on how the game was played. His mother was described as being a strict disciplinarian. Finally, Donnie seemed to have some trouble with his racial identity. His mother was White, his father was Black, and he could not decide if he was White, Black, or Brown.
Hoily. Holly was a gentle, soft-spoken five year old. She wore her hair very short and at f ir s t glance, one might mistake her fo r a boy. Holly spent time with both g irls her age and boys her age and older. When with the girls she tended to talk, play with boxed games, and watch TV. When with the boys, she participated in some of th e ir group play when allowed, and when not allowed, she watched the boys play. She was never observed to challenge the boys' refusal to let her play as at least two other g irls were observed to do. Another a c tiv ity
Holly enjoyed was singing. She would sometimes sing the names of the older boys of whom she was p articu larly fond, or chase them, catch th e ir arms and then laugh and giggle. At home, Holly's mother said her daughter loved to sing and dance.
J ill. Jill was a very out-going five year old. She was quick to approach strangers at the center, especially those who were not the mothers of other children. From the strangers she wanted to know who they were and why they were at the center. Jill had been at the center 68 longer than most of the other children and was very comfortable telling other children what they could and should not do. Some of the ch ild ren did not accept her attempts at control and this became a source of c o n flic t. J i l l liked books, games and watching TV. She also enjoyed dressing-up as "Wonder Woman," playing at the water table, and playing some running and chasing games with the boys. One distinguishing fac tor about J ill was that she knew all the "kids" and interacted with more d iffe re n t children than most other children were observed to do.
Bobby. Bobby was an active five year old who liked to play with other boys his age and older boys. Holly was the only girl with whom
Bobby consistently interacted. Ironically, he was one who frequently disallowed Holly from joining the boys in all-male pretending games.
Bobby liked both organized games such as baseball where he could be
"Pete Rose," a well-known baseball player,and pretending games such as
"Star Trek" and "Batman." Bobby was described as playing almost all the TV-based games identified in the children's culture.
Bobby was unique on several counts. First,his infatuation with
Pete Rose was apparent in his talk, some of his play, and in his "Pete
Rose" and Cincinnati Reds caps and T -s h irts . Second, the large amount of time he spent playing TV-based games at the center, and th ird , his strong enthusiasm fo r watching Star Trek almost every day. Iro n ic a lly ,
Bobby's mother was the only mother who was known to be and reported s tr ic tly controlling what television her child watched. The teachers reported the mother was quite upset at one time because of the influ ence TV was having on her son. 69
Melissa. Melissa said she was six years old quite frequently.
She loved books, she loved to ta lk and she appeared to be vbry sensi tiv e . Her adopted mother who was also her maternal grandmother reported i f you were happy, Melissa was happy; i f you were sad, she was sad. The teachers agreed.
Melissa almost always wore a dress unlike the other g irls who wore shorts. At this age, she was already very "feminine," delicate, and she avoided participating in physically, competitive activities.. In stead, she preferred staying inside looking at books, playing school, watching TV or playing outside at the water table. She played with
J ill and Holly. She did not play with the other older girls or the boys her age. She did interact with the younger children in sometimes a motherly or bossy manner. One la s t point about Melissa was that her biological mother was apparently having a long term b a ttle with an unidentified chronic disease.
Chuckie. Chuckie was different. At six years old, he talked about things that shocked the teachers such as revolutions, his own death, rape, the d e v il, and kissing. He seldom was observed to play with the other children during the course of this research. He more or less played around the other children or played for the other child ren to watch him. Sometimes he would watch the other children play.
With some of the younger boys he might pretend he was "King Kong" and chase them. For the most part, Chuckie was a "loner" who placed him self in the midst of other children, but who did not necessarily get along well with the other children. While on occasion he would exchange blows or "hits" with other children, Chuckie was never ob served during the course of this research to in itia te the exchange.
Chuckie liked to play with boxed games, work puzzles, and watch TV.
Chuckie had an older brother who began attending the center during this research. The older brother was deaf and was continually trying to get the attention of the teachers and children. Chuckie did not spend much time with his brother as was the case with the other primary subjects and their siblings at the center.
These descriptions were offered not to demonstrate that these primary subjects were exceptionally normal or exceptionally abnormal, but rather to demonstrate the d iversity and uniqueness each child contributed to a social system such as this one.
These descriptions also began to indicate that within the children's social system, there was a d e fin ite structure and id e n ti fiable patterns of interactions much like in the adult world. Certain children tended to interact with certain other children. For example
Chip and Kay were almost always together when both were at the center.
Donnie and Kay, on the other hand, were never observed to play alone together.
When all the preschoolers and big kids were taken as a whole, a social hierarchy, primarily based on age and sex, was evident. The older children tended to have the strongest impact on the nature of the interactions, e.g., what were the main activities and games played and who was e lig ib le to play those games and assume p articu lar roles.
The influence of the older children became quite apparent during this research when an influx of older children occurred at the end of the public school year. There were definite changes in the kinds, pat terns, frequency, and location of interactions. The older children played wherever they wanted to for the most part, and the younger children were frequently displaced. One of the pretend games the older children played began to appear in the play of the younger ones.
And fin a lly , some of the younger kids began to address more of th e ir attention to the older boys (six and seven year olds) and less to each other and the younger children.
In terms of sex, the boys tended to have much more control over group play also including what games were played, who was e lig ib le to play and who could assume particular roles. The g irls tended to have more control of the backroom during non-TV viewing times.
Finally, within this culture were children who were less inte grated into the system than others were. These children were some times sanctioned in subtle ways for their deviance and/or not permitted or invited to play certain games. Interesting to note, some of these children tended to spend more time in the backroom with the television, games,and books than did most other children th e ir ages and sex.
In summary, at firs t glance the children at the center looked like any other group of "normal" carefree children happily playing. How ever, as the researcher attempted to enter their world, she discovered the following:
1. The "normal" children were extremely diverse in th e ir ind ivid ual, daily behavior routines.
2. There were sets of rules in operation about play behavior and other forms of interactions, e.g., who played with whom, what 72
games were played, where the games were played, etc. (see Chapters V and VI fo r further discussion).
3. There was a social hierarchy at the center in part based on the sex and age of the children.
4. Some children were not permitted to enter group play with others.
5. Being excluded from group play was a "stressful" experience for some children.
At least two of these observations were related to TV viewing at the center.
6. TV and other media, in p a rt, served as a haven and/or a c tiv ity fo r children excluded from the children's socio-cultural system.
7. High TV viewers at the center included children who were excluded from the system as well as those children who were highly integrated into the system.
The Social Setting of the Center
The social life of the center was an outgrowth of the interaction of the major participants at the center, the children and the teachers, with each other and the environment. The kinds of interac tions that occurred were strongly related to where in the day care center these interactions occurred.
The major place of interaction included the kitchen, the big room, the backroom, and the playground. For the children, the kitchen was the s ite fo r meals, getting snacks, interacting with teachers, and doing arts and crafts.
The big room was the major location for inside free play, as well as serving for the "naptime" s ite . Located in the big room were several objects and physical structures the children played with 73 including old clothes, aprons, costumes, an inside gym, a sliding board, house playing furniture and objects, etc.
The backroom was the location of the television set. Also in this room were books, comic books, and board games. Generally, children under five years old were not present in the backroom unless accompanied by an adult.
During the course of the present observation most of the free play occurred outside on the playground. On the playground were also several objects and structures with which the children played. The immovable structures on the playground included jungle gyms, monkey bars, three tunnels of varying sizes, swing sets, a pole, and a water table. Movable objects that were popular with the children included big wheels (a form of tric y c le ) and scooters.
The children appeared to have differing preferences for play objects, structures, and locations. Some of these differing prefer ences could be explained by the sex and age of the players. Also within their culture of play, the children had different social mean ings fo r d iffere n t objects. For example, the tunnels and jungle gyms frequently "became" hide-outs, bases, houses, and bat caves in the children's play. Big wheels became bat cars and aprons became capes.
Finally, in all three play locations, especially the big room and the playground, the children frequently had favored location sites of play that were as far as possible from where the supervising teachers sat. 74
A Chronology of Daily Activities at the Center during the Summer
The day began with the arrival of teachers and children at the center. Miss Jane started serving breakfast with the first arrivals at 6:30 a.m. The children who already had breakfast played; the younger ones went outside or into the big room. Some of the "big kids" went to the backroom.
Shortly after 9:00 a.m. the swimmers got dressed to go to the pool, lined up at the gate and then departed with Miss Lydia. The rest of the children continued to play. The teacher on kitchen duty,
Miss Marty, started preparing lunch.
Around 10:00 a.m. "Juice Time" arrived. The children lined up as Miss Suzi served the ju ice. The swimmers returned about this time.
If it was Tuesday or Thursday, the picnickers for that day lined up at the gate around 10:30 a.m. I f i t was Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, around 11:00 a.m. the children were told to wash up and get ready for lunch.
By 11:20 a.m. most of the children were finished with lunch and outside playing. If it was hot, some of the children might "get squirted" with the hose. Also, around noon, Sesame Street was some times turned on the television set and those children who wanted to watch i t went inside.
At 12:30 p.m. the younger children had to take naps. There was frequent la s t minute complaining and there were some la s t minute announcements that "my mommy said I did not have to take a nap." I f the picnickers had not returned on picnic days, nap time was frequently 75 postponed until the picnickers returned.
The older children not taking naps stayed outside and played or played in the backroom. On a few days, some of the children went to
"free swim" or "to recreation" with Miss Lydia. When the children stayed inside the building, sometimes they colored or played with play dough.
Around 2:00-2:30 p.m. the nappers began getting up. They took their shoes and socks into the kitchen where either they put on their own shoes or a teacher assisted them.
Snacks were usually ready by this time. The nappers got th eir snacks as soon as they got their shoes on, while often times the older children had had th e ir snacks before the nappers awoke. The children who went swimming or to recreation got th e ir snacks whenever they returned.
A fter snacks, the children were usually allowed to play on th e ir own or sometimes they were put into the preschool group and the
"big kids" group. These groups participated in special activities such as arts and crafts, organized games, playing in the preschool, or having a story read to them.
At 4:00 p.m., unless the children were s till involved in an arts and crafts activity, most of the children went into the backroom relig io u s ly to watch Mickey Mouse. Two or more teachers were usually present with the children. A third teacher remained on the playground if all the children did not come in for "Mickey." Parents also began arriving to pick up their children. 76
A fter "Mickey" most of the children went back outside or into the big room. Some of the boys stayed in the backroom to watch Star
Trek. Interestingly enough, twenty minutes after the show started most, i f not a l l , of the boys had le f t the room.
The viewing of "Mickey" was the la s t major group a c tiv ity of the day. After "Mickey" parents continued arriving to pick up th e ir children. The teachers spent most of this time locating children and possessions fo r the parents.
The center closed at 6:00 p.m.
For the researcher, learning the daily schedule of the day care center was a quickly accomplished task. The more challenging activities included learning the subtle cultural nuances of both the teachers' and the children's life-worlds and finding ways to become parts of those cultures. This integration was necessary to fa c ilita te data-collection.
The discussion now turns to how the researcher entered these cul tures and the consequences of her membership in these cultures on data collection.
The Researcher: Data-Collection Experiences and Socialization into the Social Setting "
The process o f data collection and being socialized into the social setting of the day care center is examined in terms of (1) what were the pre-data collection concerns and expectations, (2) how was the researcher socialized into the adult world at the center and what were the consequences of this socialization on data collection and 77 analysis, and (3) how was the researcher socialized into the child ren's world at the center and what were the consequences of this socialization on data collection and analysis. Because of the per sonal nature of this data this discussion is in the first person
(see Bruyn,1966, on style options when reporting observation data).
Pre-data Collection Concerns and Expectations
Prior to going into the field I had several concerns about how to become a part of the culture of the center and how my presence would a ffe c t the data collected„ S p ecifically, these concerns in cluded (1) gaining the tru st of the children, (2) being able to under stand the children and th e ir culture, (3) the children being able to understand me especially during the interview , (4) my social id en tity at the center and reducing my obtrusiveness in the social setting,
(5) gaining cooperation from parents and staff, and (6) how to deter mine how long I should be in the fie ld .
From previous experience working with young children, I knew some seemed to have "incurable" cases of shyness and stubbornness. In order fo r this study to be successful, i t was necessary fo r me to gain the tru st and cooperation of the children—even the shy and stubborn ones. In addition to shyness and stubbornness, another possible deterrent to gaining the trust and cooperation of the children had to do with race differences. If some of the children were prejudiced against Black people, this prejudiced attitude might interfere with data collection efforts—at least initially. I was reasonably sure once any prejudiced children got used to me being around them and got 78 to know me, their prejudiced attitudes would be less of an obstacle.
My next concerns dealt with potential communication problems.
Once again, from previous experience working with young children, I knew that sometimes i t was d iffic u lt to understand the speech of the very young. This was a concern not only fo r the fie ld observations, but also for the planned interviews. Spending additional time with the children who were d if f ic u lt to understand was id en tified as one method to overcome this problem. The counterpart to the researcher understanding the children was the children understanding the re searcher. Of particular concern was the researcher using a vocabulary that the children could understand, especially during the interview when some of the questions might deal with abstract concepts such as
"favorite." Previous research with young children suggested that this would be a major problem.
The social identity I assumed in the day care center was also of concern. With the teachers my identity as a researcher would be known.
The identity I assumed with the children was more problematic. The label of researcher would probably be meaningless to children this young. I f I had assumed the role of a teacher, I was concerned that this role might inhibit their behavior during observations and re sponses during the interview. Therefore, I decided to assume the role of a visitor who liked to come to the day care center and talk to the children. I hoped this role would over time be accepted into the children's day care center culture and thus reduce my obtrusiveness in that setting. 79
Once clearance to enter a day care center had been achieved, my next concerns included gaining cooperation from parents and s ta ff.
Specifically, from the parents I needed their permission for their children to participate in the study. From the staff, I needed their cooperation in providing me with maximum fle x ib ility to move around as much as I needed, provide background information on the children, and help me secure the cooperation of the parents. My strategy here was to be friendly with the staff, be cooperative with them, and share information about the study with them whenever they demonstrated an in te re s t.
A fin a l pre-data collection concern I had was how long to stay in the field. I knew that in this method of research, knowing when one has "enough data" was problematic. While acknowledging that this was a decision that would have to be made in the fie ld , my advisor and
I set two months as the maximum time to co llect data.
In summary, these pre-data collection concerns necessitated that
I consider ways to enter the social system and ways to handle potential problems prior to entering the fie ld . S p ecifically, of major impor tance was determining how to enter the social system of the center as a regular member. I id e n tifie d two major subsystems in which I would assume slightly different identities: the subsystem/culture of the staff and the subsystem/culture of the children. My entrance and mem bership in each of these subsystems are addressed below. Also, the consequences of my memberships on data collection are addressed. 80
The Researcher and the Culture of the Staff
My goal to establish a close, cooperative relationship with the
staff was achieved—in fact, by the end of the study I was closer to some s ta ff members than they were to each other. During the course of
the field research I occasionally assisted the staff doing some daily routines if I sensed they needed help and if the act did not seriously hamper my note taking activities. They openly appreciated my assis tance. On several occasions individual s ta ff members told me they were going to miss me when the research ended. The director often teased me saying she was not going to le t me go.
My willingness to interact and cooperate with the staff yielded
three desirable consequences for data collection. First it offered me an additional way to get to know alot of the children in a natural, unobtrusive manner. An example was when I began assisting the teachers put on the children's shoes after nap time. I got to know and started gaining the trust of several of the young children during this activity. Second, in return for my cooperativeness the teachers never refused to aid me when I asked for their help recontacting parents about permission letters, making their records and files accessible to me, and being sure certain children were in certain places during the later stages of the study. They were also helpful in identifying the best place to interview the children, finding extension cords and fans when I needed them, helping me carry heavy audio-visual equipment, tolerating audio-video recording equipment, and removing "excessively" noisy or incorrigible youngsters when I was trying to record the talk of other children. 81
Finally, during my casual conversations with various staff mem bers I became aware of the storehouse of information they had about children's play in general and the background information they had on the children I had selected to be primary and secondary subjects. Con sequently, I made an adjustment in my initial design to include the teachers' perceptions as critical data for understanding how children use television in their daily interactions.
An undesirable consequence of my interactions with the staff was that some of the time I spent with them took away time that I could have been, and on some occasions wanted to be, recording data on the children. I do not consider this a major concern of the field study, especially since I added teachers' perceptions to my data pool.
My relationship with the staff, then, was one of "mutual coopera tion." There were four major periods of interaction between the staff and myself: the pre-observation period, the early observation period
(weeks 1 and 2 ), the middle observation period (weeks 3 and 4 ), and the late observation and interview period (weeks 5 through 9).
During the pre-observation period I met Miss Jane, the directo r, and Miss Cheryl, the owner, on my f ir s t v is it to the center. Cheryl gave immediate permission fo r me to conduct the research at the center and Miss Jane shared with me her enthusiasm fo r the project. On my firs t day of observing the children, Miss Jane volunteered to provide me with a lis t of the four- and five-year-old children with their birthdates before I had requested it. During the pre-observation period
I met a ll but two of the s ta ff members. 82 During the last part of the pre-observation period my interaction with the entire staff began to increase. As I moved into the early observation period, this was not necessarily an ideal situation, because my intent at that time was to observe the children—not to get to know the s ta ff. Perhaps due to curiosity and social norms, the teachers often started conversations. I usually responded with quick, light conversation and, whenever I could "politely" discourage inter action, I did so. I t was d if f ic u lt fo r them to ignore my presence as
I had originally requested they do.
The most popular topics of conversation the teachers raised with me tended to focus on th e ir personal opinions about children and television in general. At first I thought they were also trying to find out what I knew about the topic, but la te r I determined they wanted me to know what they knew or how they f e lt .
Another frequent topic of conversation during the early observa tion period was the children at the center. The teachers were quick to point out a Black child whom they all claimed to love. In fact, several teachers pointed out children they liked, children they thought were really cute, children who had discipline problems, and children who had "unusual" habits. Some of the teachers also began offering background information on the children in terms of how long they had been at the center, how they got along with other children, and a couple of teachers even offered their perceptions of the child ren's relationships with their parents. Finally, several teachers offered "lay" opinions and theories about what was wrong with certain children. 83 The teachers also began asking me "what are you finding out?"
I was hesitant to answer that question in this early stage of the
research because (1) I was not sure what I was finding out, and (2) I
doubted whether they would find my in itia l conclusions about activities
they saw every day exciting. However, when asked I did explain some
observations, but I always qualified my explanations by stating it
was really too soon to know definite results.
One final topic of talk emerged during this stage. I initiated
the reporting of inappropriate behavior of the children to the
teachers, who in turn took care of the punishment or reprimanding that was required. They encouraged me to discip lin e the children when
necessary, but I was hesitant to do so because I did not want the children to view me as a teacher or a disciplinarian; I s till wanted
them to see me as a frie n d ly v is ito r.
The teachers that I talked to the most during this stage were
Miss Jane, Miss Marty, Miss Pam, and Miss J i l l . These teachers would be my major teacher-key informants throughout the formal observation period.
As we moved into the middle observation period, our ta lk about children and television in general became almost non-existent. Dis cussions about the children a t the center increased. Questions about my research results declined.
Because I was s t il l more concerned with observing the children,
I still did not initiate conversations with the staff, unless it was about the children or the staff member's relationship to the center.
However, a new popular topic emerged in the talk the staff initiated 84 with me and this topic revolved around th e ir personal liv e s . During this period I learned many intimate details about the staff members including relationship problems they had with family members. As the rules of self-disclosure would have, I also divulged some information about myself, but generally, I tended not to reveal much. In one personal area I received questions from each staff member. They started asking about my professional plans. Some openly shared th e ir admiration for what I as a woman was doing.
By the third week of formal observations I confirmed that it was acceptable for me to discipline the children at the center and was reassured that reprimanding was permissible. I determined this action was necessary to continue effective data collection.
The teachers, feeling more comfortable with my presence, began teasing me on a regular basis. "You should be on the payroll here!",
"You know, she's really doing research on us, not the kids!", "You're getting the best education on children right here at the center!",
"If one of the girls calls in sick and I can't get anybody else to come in, you know I'm going to call you!" were typical of these comments.
In this atmosphere I felt a part of the life-thread of the adult culture. I ate meals with them and with the children; I had access to everything in the center to which any adult had access; and I knew I was well-liked and trusted. By the fourth week of formal observations
I began learning about staff conflicts, e.g., who did not get along with whom and how disturbing this atmosphere of staff conflict was to some of the s ta ff members. I was somewhat surprised to hear about the 85
degree of dissention since I had never observed any overt behaviors during my month at the center to suggest c o n flic t. I had noted a lack
of interaction between some s ta ff members, but had not attempted to assign any meaning to it. Staff interactions were not a direct part of this study. The sharing of personal information related to the
lives of the staff members continued to increase.
In this middle stage of interaction, I still talked primarily to
Miss Marty, Miss J i l l , Miss Jean, and Miss Pat. However, I was talking alot more with Miss Lydia, Miss Michele, and beginning to talk more with Miss Suzi. I still did not interact much with Miss Ellen or Miss
Cheryl.
During the late observation period and during the children's
interviews, my contact with the staff declined. Most of my hours were spent with a single child in the Chapel House.
Topics of talk with the staff centered on the children, the video tape sessions, best places to conduct interviews, the storage of video tape equipment, the hot weather, vacations of the staff, and more of the s ta ff members' personal liv e s . There was also considerable ta lk about the advertised sale of the center which none of the s ta ff claimed they had been informed about from Cheryl. When a child was diagnosed as having a somewhat serious, but non-comnunicable disease, several of the staff members were upset because not all the parents of children at the center were being notified. I was often present at these "behind-the-door" discussions, but I seldom offered any comment unless d ire c tly asked. 86
My contact with the teachers increased dramatically during my last week at the center. I decided to formally interview the
teachers and all were very cooperative. Two teachers that I had not talked with nearly as much as I had others offered a great deal of valuable information about their observations of the children.
In summary, my relationship with the staff provided several methodological advantages fo r this study including (1) an opportunity to learn a short term history of several subjects from several differ ent perspectives, (2) an opportunity to question and validate my observations when compared to the teachers' observations and inter view responses, and (3) an opportunity to get to know the children
in unobtrusive manners. Without exception, the staff was supportive and cooperative during the course of this research. In my original research design I had not planned to become fully integrated into the life -w o rld of the s ta ff. During the course of the research, however, i t happened.
The culture that I did plan to become a part of to a much fuller extent was the life-world of the children. The discussion of that experience follows.
The Researcher and the Culture of the Children
My goal with the children was to get to know them so I could begin to understand the rules of their culture and how they made sense of their world in relation to television. By the end of the field research I had spent several hours listening to the children talk about things that were important to them including television -related 87 phenomena. I had "close" relationships with several of these children including not only the "primary subjects" in this study, but also the secondary and te rtia ry subjects.
During the early stages of field observations, my strategy to get to know the children was to le t them approach me f ir s t . I adopted this approach so that I could emphasize observation more in the beginning and so that I would not intimidate some young children by being too aggressive and threatening. In other words, I wanted the children to warm up to me at th e ir own paces.
Following this procedure, I first got to know the children according to their age and sex: the older girls firs t, then the older boys, and fin a lly , the younger g irls and boys. With some of the boys who had not approached me after a given time, I slightly deviated from my "getting-to-know-the-children" procedure by simply saying "Hi" to them for several days. Eventually, they became responsive, e.g., initiating conversations with me—even some of the shy preschoolers who seldom spoke to adults. On the whole, I developed the "closest" relationships with the girls, including three-year-old girls who were not primary subjects.
Specifically, the relationships I had with all the children developed over time and had certain consequences fo r decisions I made about data collection procedures. The major decisions affected dealt with my identity in the field, the kind of observer I chose to be, the selection of subjects, and the data recorded in the field notes and audio tapes. These topics are addressed below. 88
The researcher*s identity; A visitor, a mom, a teacher. When I began collecting data one of the most frequent topics of talk with the children was on defining who I was and why I was there. One of th e ir firs t questions was "What's your name?" As part of my strategy to establish a non-teacher relationship with the children I told them my name was "Navita" without the customary "Miss" that prefaced the names of the other adult women in the center. The next question to follow was "Are you a teacher?" My response to the question was "No, I'm a v is ito r." A fter I told one preschool boy I was not a teacher fo r the second time, his immediate reply was, "Whose mommy are you?" After I explained I was not anybody's mommy because I did not have any child ren, he wanted to know "Why not?" Some of the other children, when they found out I was not a teacher, asked i f I was the mother of two of the Black children at the center.
It seemed, then, for several children the "visitor" identifica tion reply I gave them was not satisfactory. In the social setting of the day care center, I had to be a teacher or somebody's mom. This reaction was to predict the "teacher" identification I would assume mid-way through the fie ld work.
My f ir s t concrete movement toward the teacher id e n tity was directly related to my interactions with two boys whom the teachers described as being "bad." These two boys, Jerry and Donnie, shadowed my every move while I was at the center. Their antics for attention critically dulled my desire not to be perceived as a disciplinarian by the children, especially when they interrupted situations I was recording or interacting with other children. Eventually, I began 89
talking like a teacher instructing them to stop their disruptive
behavior; however, this strategy was quickly called into question as
they reminded me, "You can't t e ll me what to do, 'cause you're not a
teacher!" A few more episodes like the above led to my directing both
Jerry and Donnie to punishment in the high chair. A fter I assumed the
teacher attitu d e I had much fewer problems with them; however, the other children had been witness to our confrontations, and now I was
sure that they too were beginning to see me as a teacher.
On the whole, I established good, comfortable relationships with several children within several days. Frequently when I arrived at the center I received "enthusiastic" greetings from one or more child ren, and they were not necessarily the same children each day.
"Enthusiastic" greetings included shouting my name when they saw me,
running up to me with arms upstretched and/or with wide smiles as they told me what they had been doing or would be doing. A fter a few weeks in the field , even some of the very shy children started giving me
"enthusiastic" greetings.
These greetings were among my f ir s t indications that I would not have to worry about the children's willingness to accept me and cooper ate with me.
Other activities which also began to contribute.to my identity as a teacher included my participation in various teacher-activities including helping the children put their shoes on after naptime, le ttin g them know whose turn i t was to ride the scooter when we were on the playground, and giving them permission to take shoes off and play with boxed games that had to be used under a teacher's supervision 90 and resolving minor disagreements. For major problems, I continued to refer the children to the "teachers." I knew during the last part of my field study that the children perceived that I was a teacher because they would sometimes call me "Teacher" or "Miss Navita"—even some of the children who for the firs t few weeks only called me "Navita."
To confirm my assumption, during the la s t interviews I conducted with the children I asked them who I was and why I was there. Most of the younger ones said I was a teacher. One of the older ones, however, very matter-of-factly explained, "Sometimes you're a teacher, and some times you're not." I asked the teachers "Who do you think the children think I am?" They, too, thought some, i f not a l l , of the children thought I was a teacher. Some further suggested they thought the children saw me a friend--someone who paid special attention to them, who talked to them and listened to them as individuals. A six-year-old girl was to confirm this view when one day she explained, "I like you
'cause you talk to me . . ."
My concern about some of the White children being hesitant to cooperate with me because I was Black was not realized in any way during the field experience. But it was interesting to note how the children acknowledged that they knew I was Black and the resulting questions and misconceptions that they had about what i t meant to be
Black.
What fascinated the White children the most was my hair which I wore in a medium size Afro. One six-year-old g irl was amazed that I could fix it in different ways that made it look long or short. One of the preschool boys began calling me "Miss Fluffo" because my hair felt fluffy to him. Jerry was baffled by the cushion-like nature of my hair and he frequently asked, " If a rock fa lls on your head, w ill i t hurt you?" Other boys would ask the same question as they patted my hair. Sometimes when I was sitting and observing the children's play, a small group of girls would start playing "beauty parlor" with my hair which usually involved them pulling my hair back, separating it and patting it. Finally, several of the children asked me, "How did you get your hair like that?" I told them I was born with it like it was just as they were born with their hair being straight.
At least one child demonstrated he had some misconceptions about
Black women. One day six-year-old Chuckie asked me i f I was an Avon lady.
N: Why do you think I'm an Avon lady, Chuckie?
C: 'Cause you're always w riting .
N: Are all Black women who w rite Avon ladies?
C: Yep (pause). Are you an Avon lady?
N: No.
Some of the children directly told me or asked me if I was Black.
Three-year-old Heidi one day came and told me "You're Black!" And I said "Yes, I know and you're White!" She giggled and started talking about something else. Four-year-old Donnie asked me i f I was Black.
I told him I was and he proceeded to t e ll me he was Black, his daddy was Black and his mommy was White.
In summary, by the end of the field study, instead of being perceived as a visitor by the children, I was instead seen as a teach er. I differed from the other teachers because I spent most of my 92
time observing, lis te n in g , and talking to the children. Race, which
I had at one time identified as a potential problem with some of the children, did not result in any recognizable drawbacks.
Data collection experiences. The dominant method of data collec tion in use at a given time had certain consequences for the relation ship I was developing with the children including the kinds of ques tions I asked them and the kinds of questions they asked me. The way the children interacted with the various data collection devices also had certain consequences fo r decisions about how and when to use those devices. Below is a discussion of the kinds of questions the children and I asked each other as we interacted with my use of three different data collection devices: field notes, audio tapes, and video tapes.
Field notes. The field notes were biased to include questions and data about how the children used television in th e ir communicative interactions. Consequently, I listened very carefully for any talk and/or play that might be television-based. For example, when I observed some children playing "King Kong," I waited un til they finished the play episode and then asked some of the players who was
King Kong and where did they learn about King Kong. I asked the children who the media characters were and what they knew about the characters because I did not want to assume that the children had the same meanings and knowledge about the characters that I had. In other words, I attempted to make the meaning of the media characters prob lematic. It was important to ask where the children learned about the 93 media character or the source of their knowledge about the character
(or play theme) so I could appropriately categorize the play. If the children identified one of the sources as television (some play/ characters had more than one media source) then that play could be id e n tifie d as television-based. For example, i t would have been easy for me to assume "King Kong" was only a theatrical film-based character rather than also a television-based character in the lives of the children. But upon asking, at least one child reported seeing "King
Kong" both at the movies and on cable television. Others reported seeing "King Kong" on commercial television probably in the television promos fo r the movie. Hence, in the fie ld notes "King Kong" could be classified as television-based play.
In addition to listening to their talk and play, I observed media based clothing, shoes, towels, lunch boxes that the children used. As with television-based play and talk, I asked the children who the characters were on their possessions. Frequently the children became excited as they explained who the characters were.
F in a lly , when the children came up to me and began discussing something that sounded lik e i t might be television-based, I encouraged the discussion and asked questions to clarify the source and the meaning. For example, one day some older children were talking about tornadoes. The previous night the Columbus area had had a tornado watch. By asking a few questions, I was able to determine that the sources of the knowledge about the tornado was television, radio, and their parents. 94
Just as I asked questions of the children, so did they ask questions of me. As indicated above, several early questions had to do with my identity and later my hair. There were also several questions related to my note taking.
One thing that made me different from the other teachers was that I had a notebook in which I was continually w riting. The three standard questions the children asked me were:
1. "What are you writing about?"
2. "Why are you always writing?"
3. "Can I write?"
My standard three responses were:
1. "Things I hear."
2. "So I don't forget (the things I hear)."
3. (a) "Yes," (b) "Later," and (c) "No, not now."
These responses tended to resu lt in the children not asking any follow-up questions on my writing, but instead gave them the oppor tun ity to s ta rt talking about something else.
When I let the children "write," it provided another way for me to get to know the children and collect another potential form of data.
To deal with the early problem of th e ir w riting preventing me from recording notes, I began carrying a second notebook just for the children to use.
The biggest problem th e ir question-asking about my-note-taking caused during the early stages of data collection was that sometimes their interruptions were so frequent (one child would ask and leave, and then another child would do the same) that it made note-taking 95 d ifficu lt. The frequency of these questions being asked dropped dramatically after the third week in the field. In part this was due to the introduction of the "camera" as a new device for data collec tion.
Audio tapes. In addition to asking questions about media-based content in the children's talk and play, with the introduction of the tape recorder, I also began asking and telling the children how and when they could interact with this new device that I called a tape recorder and they called a camera. One of the teachers cleared up this discrepancy for me by explaining that once included among the toys at the center was an old discarded box-shaped camera that was very popular with the children. The cassette tape recorders I was using resembled the size and shape of the camera.
Unfortunately, many of my comments dealing with the tape recorder included "No, put that down," and "Don't touch!" Other requests included asking primary subjects to hold the tape recorder (and later the microphones I experimented with) in an attempt to get better samples of th e ir ta lk . The microphones were more obtrusive than the tape recorder because a ll the children knew what a microphone was and what one was supposed to do with a microphone—sing! In spite of these problems of "sticky-fingeritis" and singing, I was s till able to collect some good samples of their play and talk with the tape recorders.
The children also had several questions for me related to the tape recorder. The firs t questions I had each day included "Did you bring your camera today?" or "Where is your camera?" On a few 96 occasions I let children talk into the tape recorder and then played
back what was recorded. This activity generated several questions and
requests.
When the children heard themselves on tape, most of the children would become wide-eyed and laughed or giggled. They did not neces
s a rily understand the term "record" which they heard me use, so some
times they would say "record me" expecting the recorder to play back.
Most of the children, however, when they wanted to hear themselves, would say, "Play me," "I want to hear me," or "Turn me on." When I played the children's talk back to them, some of the preschool children
asked, "Why is that little girl in there saying what I'm saying" or
"How did I get in there?" Some children even denied that they had
said what they heard. These comments were typical not only during the observational stages of the study, but also during the interview stage when I audio-taped the primary subjects' responses. Frequently, the children asked me "do you wanna ta lk ," indicating they wanted me to interview them and record our discussions for immediate play-back.
Video tapes. During the second part of the children's interview
I asked the children to watch segments of three children's television programs and explain what they saw. During this interview, some of the children asked me to show more of the program than ju s t the seg ments I had in the interview. Also, before I left the center, I played back for the children the video-tapes of themselves. The most frequent questions here included, "Is that me?"
Another way to view the questions the children asked me was to identify the weeks in the field those questions that were most 97 frequently asked by the largest number of children. When this is done, the following sequence of questions over time can be reported:
Pre-observation "What's your name?" and Week 1 "Are you a teacher?"
Week 2 "What are you writing?" II Can I write?" IITie my shoes."
Weeks 3-4 "Did you bring your camera today?" IICan I hold it? " II Is it my turn yet?" II Teacher, watch me!" II Can I get the ball?" II Can I take o ff my shoes?" II Donnie h it me!" II You're Black!" II Let's go in the backroom!"
Week 5 Take my picture!" II Is that man your husband?"
Weeks 6-7 Wanna ta lk now?" II Can we go in the Chapel House?" II Is it my turn yet?"
Weeks 8-9 Wanna ta lk now?" Where have you been?"
In conclusion, this chapter has presented the firs t set of results on the social actors at the day care center, the social setting of the center with emphasis on the social meanings the objects and locations had for the children, the time orientations operating, and finally, the researcher's experiences and socialization into that setting. CHAPTER IV
RESULTS I I : CHILDREN AND TELEVISION CONSUMPTION,
PREFERENCES, CHILD VS. PARENT REPORTS,
AND PERCEIVED REALITY
Television was an integral part of the children's life worlds.
This fact was revealed in the observations of the children in their day-to-day interactions as well as in the interviews of the children, their parents, and the day care center teachers. This chapter begins to specifically explicate the role of television in the lives of the primary subjects. Based primarily on the children's and parents' interviews and the field notes, the results about the children's home consumption of television, their preferences for particular television programs and television characters, and the children's perceptions about television and its content are presented. Because the children and th eir parents sometimes offered d iffe re n t kinds and amounts of information on similar questions, a discussion of these differences is also offered.
In terms of the format of the following discussion, propositional statements which identify and summarize important points and trends dealing with the primary subjects' relationships with television are presented.
98 99
The Children and Their Television Consumption
The children in this study reported they liked to watch TV, and they watched i t every day. According to th e ir parents, the children spent ju s t under 18 hours a week watching television.(See Appendix F for a summary of questionnaire results on consumption.) While 18 hours a week may appear considerably less than the 29-hours-a-week average reported for this age group by Comstock et al. (1978), the non-specific day/time method of question-asking utilized on the amount-of-televisi on-watched question predictably yielded low e s ti mates from the parents. As revealed in previous research, there was quite a range in the weekly viewing amounts of time reported. While five-year-old Bobby was reported to watch only seven hours a week during the winter, five-year-old J ill was reported to watch 48 hours a week during the winter. In terms of seasonal viewing, most child ren were reported to watch up to twice as much television during the winter than they watched during the summer. Overall, the average amount of television the children watched was almost identical to the average amount of television th e ir parents watched. Apparently, as found in previous research, the children's amount of viewing was related to how much television the parents watched.
Finally, like other children their ages, these children watched television alone and with other family members. They had some say in the programs they watched, and they watched both children and adult- oriented fare.
p4_l There were differences among the children in th e ir te le vision consumption which appeared to be related to sex and age. 100
Previous research generally suggested there were few differences between preschool boys and g irls in terms of th e ir consumption of television. When sex differences were noted, the boys were usually reported to view more television than did the girls. In the present research, based on parent reports, the girls viewed more than the boys, a lb e it the difference was small (boys = 16.1 hours per week and girls = 18.3 hours per week). While boys have also been reported to be heavier viewers of action-adventure programs and other adult programs, this was not necessarily the case with the children in the present sample. With these children, there were no clear differences between the sexes in the kinds of programs frequently viewed. Both sexes were regular viewers of the various adult program formats.
The differences based on age were much more pronounced. As a group, the five and six year olds watched considerably more television than did the three and four year olds (three and four year olds = 13.5 hours per week and five and six year olds = 21.5 hours per week). In terms of the kinds of programs frequently watched, the younger group watched situation comedies more regularly than did the older children while the older group watched adult action-adventure programs more regularly than did the younger children. Age differences among pre schoolers were reported in previous research. Interesting to note is that the older preschooler in this research appeared to be selecting action adventure programs over situation comedies at an earlier age than children in earlier studies.
In summary, the children in the present study were very similar to other children in previous related research. While some potential 101
d is s im ila ritie s were noted, the overwhelming evidence here suggested
the children in this study were indeed "normal" consumers of te le
vision.
Children's Television Program and Character Preferences
In contrast to programs frequently watched were the programs and
characters that were the children's favorite. This was one area
where parent and child reports tended to have several differences.
Consequently, in the following discussion the children's reports, when
available, are emphasized. The differences are treated in more detail
later in this chapter.
The children's television program preferences were similar to
preferences of other children their ages. When cartoons came on the
screen at the day care center, the children cheered! This enthusiasm
for cartoons was also revealed during the interviews. By far,
according to the child respondents, cartoons were their favorite kind
of program. (See Appendix G fo r summary of questionnaire results on
preferences.) Almost half of all the favorite programs reported were
cartoons. Next in popularity were children's non-cartoon programming, followed by situation comedies. The parents also reported that car toons were th e ir children's most preferred kind of television program.
The favorite television characters cited by the children were over whelmingly cartoon characters.
P. _ The children liked television programs (characters) where * the characters possessed certain physical attributes, certain social attributes, and/or engaged in specific kinds of actions. 102
The children reported they liked the programs where the charac ters were funny, the characters were nice, and the characters helped people. Four-year-old Chip liked the Howdy Doody program because the characters did "funny tric k s ." Six-year-old Melissa liked Scooby Poo because the characters "run around and act silly." She liked the
Monkeys because i t has "men that are funny lik e monkeys." Five-year- old J ill, on the other hand, liked the characters on the Pink Panther and Scooby Poo because they were "nice" and five-year-old Bobby explained he liked the superheroes because they beat up the bad guys and helped the good people.
The children also liked programs where the characters had power over other characters and where the characters had certain physical traits. Donnie liked a character because he believed the character d id n 't get "spanked." Alan liked Farrah Fawcett because he believed she told the other people on the program Charlie's Angels what to do.
He also liked "Road Runner" because this character is "small." Other physical attributes were also appealing to the children. Several girls indicated they liked certain female characters because the char acters were "pretty." Some boys indicated they liked certain male characters because those characters were "strong."
P. 3 There were differences in television program and character preferences which appear to be related to the sex and age of the children.
There were some differences between the boys and g irls in th e ir preferences for television programs and characters. Specifically, these differences occurred in the kinds of cartoons preferred, prefer ences fo r children's non-cartoon programs, and preferences for situation comedies. As a ru le , and consistent with previous research, the boys preferred more action-adventure cartoons with
"superheroes" as the leading characters. The girls, on the other hand, preferred more cartoons with "animals" as the leading charac ters. The boys also preferred cartoons and children's non-cartoon programs more than the g irls did. (As a group, the male respondents on this question were younger than the female respondents,and this finding could be more a function of age than sex.) In previous research, contrary to the above, girls have usually been reported to be the stronger viewers of children's non-cartoon programming.
Finally, the girls preferred more situation comedies than the boys, and this also was consistent with previous research.
In terms of favorite character and the sex of the child, based on the children's responses, there were no clear preferences fo r char acters of the same or d iffe re n t sex. In other words, among the pre schoolers, boys had females who were favorite characters and girls had males who were favo rite characters.
Age differences also appeared among the children not only in kinds of programs preferred, but also in the number of programs preferred. When asked what th e ir favo rite programs were, a ll children named one or more favo rite programs. The fiv e - and six-year-old children proportionately named more cartoons but not more total programs than did the three- and four-year-old children. The five- and six-year-old children also did not name children's non-cartoon programs such as Sesame Street among th e ir favo rites, whereas the three and four year olds did. Finally, the five and six year olds 104 named adult action-adventure programs among th e ir favorites where the three and four year olds did not.
The major difference between the three and four year olds and the five and six year olds on their favorite television characters was that most of the three and four year olds said they did not have any favorite characters or favorite people on television.
In summary, as in the area of television consumption, the fin d ings on the children's preferences for television programs and charac ters in this study were consistent and hence supportive of previous research in this area. These present findings also suggested that some preference and consumption trends reported among elementary school age children were already id e n tifia b le among preschool children, some as young as three years old. For example, the present research more clearly established that characters are preferred by preschoolers based on at least three related criteria: social skills (e.g., helping people), physical attractiveness (e.g., being pretty or strong), and specific actions which oftentimes can be easily imitated
(e.g., running, falling). Finally, this research is supportiveof the existence of sex and age differences, however small, among preschool children in consumption and preferences for television.
The parents and children did not always report the same kinds or amounts of information about the children's experiences with tele vision. The following discussion addresses these differences. 105
Child and Parent Reports: A Comparison
Both the children and their parents were asked questions about the children's consumption of television and preferences for specific programs and characters. This strategy provided the opportunity to get multiple perspectives of the children's television consumption and to cross-check and compare responses, as well as the opportunity to evaluate to what extent, i f a t a l l , preschool children could be capable interview respondents.
Before discussing the findings in this area, a brief explanation of how the questionnaires were used is necessary. While all the parents answered all questions on the parent questionnaire, the child ren's questionnaire was not used in the same formal manner. Instead, during the children's interview, the researcher used the questionnaire as a guide to question-asking. In some instances,the researcher emphasized and probed into different areas with different children based on the children's interest, enthusiasm, and willingness to share information in those areas, e.g., what's real and pretend on tele vision and television-based games. Also, in spite of the careful wording of the interview questions, as in previous research with young children, the researcher asked some questions several different ways to be sure the child understood the question. Even with these precautions, however, i t was suspected that the three-year-old respondent and one or two of the four-year-old respondents may not have fu lly comprehended the essence of a very small number of ques tions. When the researcher suspected the child did not understand the question, she omitted that question in that particular interview. 106
Consequently, due to the probes, some potential lack of understanding, and the extremely uncomfortable and hot weather during the interview period, some questions were not asked of all the children. Now the discussion turns to a direct comparison of parent-child responses.
The children were capable respondents on some questions about their television consumption and preferences, but not necessarily all questions. During the interview, the children were asked questions which had answers based upon some "objective" referent the children's parents could confirm or refute, e.g., the number of television sets in the home. When asked about the number and location of television sets in the home, the children's answers were usually identical to th e ir parents' responses. There were some questions, however, with which the children had some difficulty.
When the children were asked if they had "black and white" television(s) or "color" televisions in their homes, it became obvious they did not understand these "adult terms." (See discussion on social reality.) The same situation occurred when the children were asked i f they had "cable" television in th e ir homes. When asked about the time of day (e .g ., morning, afternoon, e tc .) they viewed specific programs, some children reported watching programs at times when those programs were not on the a ir . To the researcher's knowl edge, none of the children had access to video recorders.
Other areas where the children were less capable of reliably responding than were th e ir parents included ascertaining th e ir parents' motives for not allowing the children to watch some television programs. (See discussion on social reality.) In the area of 107 frequently watched programs, the parents were able to provide a more complete presentation of the programs th e ir children watched at home on a regular basis. While the children frequently only named two or three programs, the parents named considerably more. F in a lly , the parents could provide a weekly hour estimate of the children's tele vision consumption, while of course, the preschool children could not.
The parents were also capable respondents on some questions about th e ir children's television consumption and preferences, but not necessarily on all questions. On several occasions, some parents demonstrated a lack of knowledge of th e ir children's daily television consumption outside the home.
For example, the primary subjects watched television daily in the day care center. Some parents did not report this information, and in one case, a mother whose son was one of the heaviest d aily viewers at the day care center insisted her child was a light, non daily viewer of television. Parents tended not to report the tele vision viewing that the children did at friends' homes.
Some of the children's responses also suggested the parents might not have been fu lly aware of th e ir children's home consumption of television. When asked to identify the times of day they watched television, the children reported they watched it much more fre quently than the parents reported they did. In one case, a child reported watching a morning program that came on only the cable channels. The mother reported the child never watched television in the morning; however, the child did not watch the program at the day care center because the center did not have cable television. 108
While the children were found to be less capable respondents on some questions in the previous section, the researcher decided that in the areas of reporting daily viewing vs. non daily viewing and where TV was watched, the children were probably better able to give a more accurate answer. While not a comfortable decision fo r the researcher to make, this conclusion was derived from evidence in both the fie ld notes and interview notes.
Another area where there were obvious parent-child differences was in the reporting of the children's favorite programs and charac ters. Because d iffere n t programs and characters were cited as well as d iffe re n t reasons fo r why programs and characters were favo rites, the researcher here also decided to assume the children's responses were more accurate than the parents'. S p ecifically, the assumption was made that the children knew th e ir minds and hence "their favorites" and what they liked better than their parents did. In other words, the children may more accurately report their "favorites," while the parents may be more accurately-reporting something else, e.g., programs children frequently talk about or use in play. Be cause these differences in reported program preferences and charac ters are considered important, these differences are addressed in more detail below.
P4-4 Parents and children report different programs and charac- . ” ters as the children's favorites.
The favorite television programs of the children reported by the children themselves and those reported by the parents differed in terms of the number of programs reported and the relative proportion 109 of different program categories reported.
The parents reported more favorite programs for their children than the children reported. While the children only agreed on four favo rite programs ( Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, L ittle Rascals, and
Scooby Poo), the parents identified fourteen common favorite programs of their children.
When the program categories of the favo rite programs were com pared, it was found that the children reported more cartoons as being among their favorites than did the parents report. Specifically, the children reported that cartoons constituted almost fifty percent of their preferred programs, whereas the parents only reported that cartoons constituted twenty-three percent of the children's preferred programs. In terms of adult action-adventure programs, the children reported that these programs constituted only three percent of their favorites, while their parents reported action-adventure programs constituted twenty percent of th e ir children's favo rite programs.
I t is obvious from these data that the children and the adults painted a very different picture of what overall constituted the children's favo rite programs. One area where the children and the parents shared more agreement was the percentage of favo rite programs that were situation comedies. The children reported fifteen percent while the parents reported twenty percent.
While the numbers here are very small and therefore any claims based on these numbers must be held suspect, these findings at least suggest parent and child reports on children's favorite programs may be significantly different in certain areas. 110
When queried about favorite characters, the parents reported several favorite characters of the children that the children them selves did not report. In fact, the parents and the children only agreed on one favo rite character, "Mickey Mouse.In addition to reporting different characters, the parents also reported more char acters. While three-fourths of the children's favorite characters cited were cartoon characters, less than a fourth of the favorite characters identified by the parents were cartoon characters.
P4-5 Parents and children report d iffere n t reasons for certain television programs and characters being the children's favo rites.
In addition to asking what were the favorite programs and charac ters, both the parents and children were asked why they thought the p articu lar programs and characters were favo rites. As discussed above, the children liked programs where the characters possessed certain social attributes, physical attributes, and engaged in specific actions. While parents also reported some of these reasons for programs being favorites, they also reported an entire set of reasons the children did not report. Specifically, the parents said some programs and characters were th e ir children's favorites because the children talked about the programs, the children pretended they were the characters on the programs, or the children enjoyed counting and singing along with the television audio. I t appears that the children described the reasons fo r a program being the favo rite based solely on what the characters did on the screen, while parents described the reason fo r a program being the favo rite on not only what the child appeared to enjoy watching on the screen, but also on i n what the child did with what he or she watched, e.g., talked, played,
sang.
In summary, the parents and children were able to provide both sim ilar and d iffe re n t responses to questions related to the ch ild ren's consumption of and preferences in television fare. Major dif ferences had to do with the children's specific favorite programs and favorite characters cited by the two groups. The results from this research suggest that when investigating children's consumption of and preferences for television programs and characters, parents and children individually offer valuable, but incomplete pictures.
The Children's Perceptions about Television
The world of television known to the children was not the same world known to adults. The beliefs and assumptions the children made about television reflected both the perceptual boundedness of children in the early stages of cognitive development and the children's re markable, creative ability to make sense of television within the perceptual boundedness. From the adult perspective, some of the children's meanings were "misconceptions" or were incorrect. However, the older children's meanings for television appeared to become more complex and more similar to "adult meanings." Regardless of the cor rectness or the simplicity of the children's beliefs about television, these beliefs were important. They provided a valuable gateway for the adults who wanted to venture into the children's world of tele vision to better understand the role of television in the lives of these young children. Below, the children's assumptions or "special 112 meanings" about (1) the reality of television, (2) the people on television, (3) the uses and effects of television, (4) the physical nature of television, (5) program formats, (6) watching television compared to other activities, and (7) television program content are presented.
The Reality of Television
P4_6 The world of "pretend" and "reality" on television were different not only for children when compared to adults, but also among the preschool children of d ifferin g ages.
When the children talked about "what was real" and "what was pretend or make-believe" on television, the researcher discovered what appeared to be a logical or "rational" method of decision-making which was in part based on age.
The youngest respondents, the three and some four year olds, said everything on television was real. To them, if something could be seen on televisio n , then that something was real!
When the children began differentiating between real and pretend phenomena on television , cartoon characters and muppets were among the first entities to be identified as pretend. Specifically, it appeared that cartoon animals with human abilities, e.g., talking, were first identified as pretend; then the animated humans were identified as pretend. These forms of differentiating started with some four year olds and perhaps one three year old. Everything else for this group, however, was almost always "re a l." For these children, i f a te le vision program had real, non-cartoon people, then the program and the people were rea l. A next level of d iffe re n tia tin g appeared to be related to the special features and superpowers associated with non-cartoon charac ters. The first of these distinctions had to do with the believability of the super powers. I f a child believed the super power, e .g ., flying, was something people could really do, then the child was more lik e ly to believe the non-animated character with that super power was indeed re a l. For example, several children believed "Steve Austin" was real because they believed bionics really existed the way they
(the bionics) were shown on the Six Million Dollar Man. Six-year-old
Melissa explained, ". . . he (Steve Austin) is really bionic! He can run faster and jump higher!" Another child explained "Captain Marvel" was real because "Captain Marvel can re a lly fly !"
A second distinction with determining the reality of characters associated with superhuman powers occurred when the child decided only the superpower was make-believe or pretend, e.g., "Captain
Marvel really can't fly." In this case as in others, the child decided the flying was pretend, but the character was re a l. One sub je c t explained, "Steve Austin is re a l, but his bionics are pretend."
A third distinction occurred when the subject decided the powers were pretend,and,therefore,any characters associated with those powers were pretend. What is important to note is that the same child might say "Captain Marvel" was pretend, but would also say "Steve Austin" was rea l. The older the child was, however, the more lik e ly he or she would begin identifying all characters associated with superhuman powers as being pretend. 114
The last group of characters to be identified as pretend were
the " re a lis tic fic tio n a l" characters such as "Fonzie" from Happy Days
and "Starsky" and "Hutch." The cartoon and superhuman c rite ria
did not distinguish these characters as pretend, and the children would have to later develop a new set of criteria to identify
"realistic fictional characters" as "pretend." This last set of
criteria was not clearly revealed in this research.
There was one major qualification to this progression of deter
mining fantasy and re a lity . In some cases, when a child saw a real world referent to a fictional television character, e.g., a life-like
"Mickey Mouse" at a parade or an amusement park, that referent served
to confirm the real world existence of that television character for
that child. In other words, the child was much more likely to
report that character was real, even though all other similar charac
ters would be iden tified as pretend. The most pervasive example of
this phenomenon at the day care center was with the television charac
ters "Starsky" and "Hutch." Frequently,-a car that looked exactly lik e the car used by "Starsky" on the program was parked near the day care center. The children believed the car really belonged to those
TV characters. When the children talked about "Starsky" and "Hutch,"
they insisted these characters were not only real people, but that they were "real cops." Almost all the children at the center between three and six years old believed "Starsky" and "Hutch" were real.
Also, a t least two children believed "Mickey Mouse" was real because they saw him at an amusement park. 115
In summary, the world of pretend/make-believe and the world of reality on television was different not only for the children when compared to adults, but also to children when compared to each other.
The differences among children were in part, but not solely, based on age.
The People on TV
The children developed th e ir own sets of assumptions about the people they saw on television including who were the good and bad guys, where people on TV came from, where people on TV go when they are not on TV, and how one character could be in d iffe re n t TV programs.
p4_7 The children id en tified the "good guys" and "bad guys" on television by the characters' actions and/or by the characters' ethnic, national, and racial identities.
Good guys and bad guys inhabited the children's world of tele vision. In this world, the good guys fought, killed, boxed, and ja ile d the bad guys. The good guys also helped good people. S pecifi cally, in this research,the good guys were people like "Starsky" and
"Hutch," "Batman," "Wonder Woman," and the "Americans." For at least one child, if real-life bad guys tried to get her at the center, she earnestly believed "Starsky" and "Hutch" would come and save her!
The bad guys, on the other hand, were those who k ille d good guys and "other good, regular people." I t seems the bad guys were seen as more violent in that they were more frequently described as killing.
Specifically, the bad guys included robbers, the "Joker" (from Batman),
Indiana, some cowboys, the Japanese, the Germans, and Black people.
Evidence of binary thinking, e .g ., a ll cops are good,and a ll robbers 116 are bad,was demonstrated among the children as they attempted to apply their television stereotypes to other television programs and to the real world. Four-year-old Chip was disturbed and upset, according to his mother, when he watched a program about "bad" policemen. Six- year-old Chuckie was confused because he was learning in real l i f e a ll Black people were not bad guys. Five-year-old Bobby believed the
Indians were a ll bad guys.
That the children were able to identify good and bad guys by the characters' actions was expected. But that these children identified bad guys by the characters' ethnic, national, and racial identities was disturbing. Even more disturbing was that the children attempted to utilize these television stereotypes in making sense of their real worlds.
P4_8 According to the children, the "people on TV" came from specific "creators" or from specific geographical loca tions.
The children had m ultiple beliefs about where people on TV came from. Some children believed the people on TV came from specific geographical locations including "Hollywood," "California," and
"Columbus, Ohio." Chip, who lived in Columbus, said people on TV came from his home town because he once saw his mother on TV. Other responses about where people on TV came from included from those who created the TV people. One child said the people on TV came "from the men who make the TV's." Holly reported the people came from God, while J i l l simply stated the people came "from th eir bodies."
P. p According to the children, when the TV people were not on y TV, these people lived in the television set, went home or to heaven, and/or came to "real life." 117
When a television character was not on TV, the children's group wisdom said that character could be doing a number of things.
According to some of the children, the people on TV lived or stayed in the television set. For Donnie, i t appeared only certain charac ters lived in the set. He explained that "Bugs Bunny" specifically lived in his set. He may have also been trying to explain only car toon characters lived in the television set. Indeed, of all tele vision characters,only cartoon characters are not seen in real life .
Melissa explained the people were s till on TV, "but you can't see them because it 's dark."
Other children explained the characters went home and went to bed. For H olly, the characters went "up to God." She appeared to have been suggesting that going o ff TV represented a symbolic dying and going up to heaven. Bobby reported that when the TV people were not on TV, they would "come to real l i f e l " He based his comment on his trip to California where he saw life -lik e Disneyland characters.
F in a lly , the "Starsky" and "Hutch" car(mentioned above)convinced some children that when the TV people were not on TV, they "came to real life" as the TV characters they portrayed.
P. . The children were confused by actors (actresses) who 0 appeared on more than one program with d iffere n t identities.
One point of confusion for several of the children was why one actor was on different programs with different identities. Six-year- old Chuckie wanted to know how "Steve Austin" (Six Million Dollar Man) got to be a cowboy on Big V alley. Chuckie la te r explained he thought the people in decision-making roles in TV ("they") "took off Steve's 118 bionics so he could be a cowboy." Other children also indicated their confusion over why "Steve Austin" was a cowboy on another program.
The children, then, tended to identify the actor by his or her television identity in the program with which the children were most familiar, and to speculate how and why that character got to be another character on another program. Only the older children began to demonstrate that they understood a television actor had a "real world" identity separate and distinct from his or her television portrayals (e.g., the character "Steve Austin" is really the actor
Lee Majors).
Uses and Effects of Television
The children were aware of different ways television entered into their lives. In a manner of speaking, they were able to report some of their uses of television and some of the effects television had on their lives, or at least provide the researcher with enough evidence to identify distinct uses and effects. Some of these uses and effects of television identified by the children and the researcher included:
(1) punctuation of the day and the week, (2) something from which to learn, (3) development of para-social relationships, (4) restriction of viewing as a punishment, (5) something p o ten tially harmful to one's eyesight, (6) something about which to ta lk and argue, and (7) some thing to do/watch.
P, The children used television to punctuate the day and the week. 119
The children at the day care center used the act of watching
television and certain programs to punctuate their daily events. The
two most frequently watched programs at the center, Sesame Street and
Mickey Mouse, were anticipated, e .g ., "Is i t time for Mickey?" These
programs were also associated with certain time-related activities.
In particular, the end of Sesame Street signaled "nap time" for the
children a t the center. Mickey Mouse signaled the end of the day care-center day and the arrival of parents, e.g., "My daddy's cornin' when Mickey goes o ff."
The end of the week was anticipated by some children because
"cartoon day" camel Known to adults as Saturday, cartoon day was sometimes discussed by some six- and seven-year-old children on Monday.
In general, the children indicated that they associated particu la r programs with particu lar times of the day, and they were confused when programs appeared at the "wrong times."
P a-l2 children reported they learned songs, information (e.g., "school stuff"), and prosocial and aggressive behaviors from watching televisio n .
The children knew they learned things from watching television .
When asked what they learned, the younger children sang songs from television programs and comnercials and told about the characters they learned about on TV, e .g ., "Big B ird." Some of the older children explained they learned various kinds of information such as "school stuff," "acrobatic stuff," "things to eat and buy," and "what the weather's going to be." In terms of prosocial and aggressive be havior, most children only described the prosocial things they learned from television. Five-year-old Bobby reported he learned "how to do 120 fire stuff." The "fire stuff" he was referring to included the things the main characters did on the program Emergency such as
"helping people that are hurt and sick" and helping those people with
"heart attacks." Six-year-old Melissa explained television taught her "not to be bad," "to share," and "to be a good sport." Only one child described learning from TV what can be labeled aggressive behavior. Four-year-old Alan said he learned "hitting," "karate," and "boxing." He furth er demonstrated he had learned how to kick as 2 he explained, "sometimes Starsky and Hutch do th is ."
P* 13 Some children had "shared" communication experiences with the people on TV.
There was also evidence that the children developed para- social relationships with the people on TV. Most of the children believed the children on TV were like their friends in real life .
In fa c t, some of the younger children believed the people on TV were their friends. And, as in most friendships, these children reported their friends on TV talked to them, and the same children, such as
Donnie, reported they talked back to these friends. Four-year-old
Alan specifically reported he talked to "Starsky" and "Hutch."
Even those children who did not id e n tify the people on TV as being th e ir friends reported that the people on TV sometimes talked to them. Five-year-old Holly reported that the people on TV said "h i,"
"bye," and "hello" to her. J ill reported that people on the news and weather programs talked to her.
And several children said they talked to the people on TV. Jill explained she talked to the people because they asked her questions. 121
A six-year-old girl explained she talked to people on TV “just for fun" because the people on TV couldn't really hear her.
Therefore, i t appeared that some of the younger children may have actually believed they shared a mutual communication experience with people on TV. The older children, however, realized that their communication acts were "in fun" and not a mutual experience. I t should also be noted that while some older children reported they did not ta lk to the people on TV, they were observed to do so at the center.
P4 14 ^he children did not always re fle c t an understanding of why they were restricted from watching some television programs.
In some households, television viewing by the children was only allowed as long as the children were "good"—at least from the children's perspectives. When the children were "bad," they were not allowed to watch TV. Some parents indicated there were other reasons for not allowing their children to watch TV or a specific program.
These reasons included the parents' b e lie f that the program content was too violent, too sexually explicit, or too "scary." The children, on the other hand, did not indicate they understood the parental restrict- tions based on program content and instead reported they could not watch certain programs because they were badl
It seems, then, that some children believed their behavior was the sole reason fo r television program res tric tio n s , whereas, at least in some cases, the program content was the reason fo r the parent setting the restriction. 122
P. The only negative consequence of watching television identified by the children was that sitting too close to the screen might "make you go blind."
The children indicated knowledge of only one po ten tially harmful e ffe c t of television on them. During the television viewing at the center, the older children frequently admonished the younger children that sitting too close to the television set would hurt their eyes and make them go blind. Therefore, except for the eyesight, the children did not indicate th e ir b e lie f that television was harmful to their health and well-being.
Finally, the children knew that television was something to watch and something about which to ta lk . They knew that watching television was something they could choose to do or not to do within certain parameters laid down by parents and teachers. They also indicated that while watching TV they could engage in other activities such as talking, eating dinner, playing, and looking at books.
In summary, the group wisdom of the children reflected a broad range of understanding how the children used television and how they were affected by televisio n .
Matching Television vs. Other A c tiv itie s
The children liked to watch television, but, of course, there were several other activities they also enjoyed. When given the oppor tunity to watch television or to engage in some of these other activities, sometimes the children selected watching television and sometimes they did not.
P4_16 children preferred watching TV to listening to a story read to them or listening to the radio. 123
Watching television was more a ttra c tiv e to the children than the two activities that required little physical activity or involvement but that required more imaginative activity —1 istem’ng to stories and listening to the radio. While listening to a story was somewhat popular with the younger children, listening to the radio had no real appeal to any age group or to eith er sex. At least one child explained she did not lik e radio because she could not "see i t . "
P. , 7 The children preferred playing outside, playing records, and reading comic books to watching TV.
The activities the children preferred to watching television were those in which some physical action on their part was required- playing outside, playing records, and reading comic books. The child ren preferred playing outside because it was "funner," because it lasted longer than watching a TV program, and because they could climb a tree, ride a bike, or play with the "doggie." It appeared that one of the major attractions of playing outside was that the children got to do things they did not normally do inside.
Playing records was an immensely popular activity with the child ren. While they did not clearly explain why they enjoyed playing records so much, the attractiveness of this activity was probably due to their ability to predict and control what they heard as well as the ability to participate with what they heard, e.g., play records they liked and sing along.
And, finally, the children selected comic books over watching TV because comic books were "neat," "more funner," and to paraphrase
Melissa, you can read a comic book and watch TV. 124
Only one a c tiv ity was not c le a rly preferred more or less than watching television,and that was playing inside. In fact, one respondent explained she liked both a c tiv itie s equally because at home she played and watched television at the same time.
The Physical Nature of Television
The children made sense of television within their life worlds by describing what i t did, e .g ., "shows you shows," what they did with i t , e .g ., "watched i t , " and what i t looked lik e , e .g ., "a square thing that things show up on." The younger subjects were more lik e ly to describe what television did, while the older children were more likely to describe how they used television and what the television set looked lik e . This appeared to be the extent of th e ir explanations about the physical nature of televisio n .
P. The children's reality of television did not include terms which adults use to describe the physical nature of television.
The children did not understand the use of some terms commonly used by adults to identify particular physical properties of tele vision. For example, most of the children did not understand the term
"black and white television." When asked if they had this kind of television in their homes, they offered explanations such as Alan's comment that the TV in his home was only black when i t was turned o ff and Mitch's comment that his set was white when on and brown when o ff.
Donnie explained that his set was black and white and blue. At least one subject appeared to be describing the colors of the television set cabinet. 125
The term "cable television" was also confusing to some of the children. Mitch explained his home had "cable television" because his television sat on a "table." His parents said they did not have cable television. One term they did understand, however, was
"channel," and sometimes they requested to watch a specific channel rather than requesting the particular program they wanted to watch, e .g ., "We want 4" meaning they wanted to watch Star Trek.
Program Formats
The meanings children assigned to the television program formats they watched were not always consistent with "adult meanings."
F*4_ i9 The ages of the children were related to their under standing of what comnercials were.
Commercials had a variety of meanings fo r the children. The younger children were generally not able to describe what commercials were. Usually they eith er said they did not know what commercials were or they said commercials were "just things." The older children, on the other hand, were more lik e ly to describe what commercials did.
Five-year-old Bobby reported a comnercial was "something that comes on and then goes back off again." A six-year-old boy explained that commercials "mess up the shows you're watching." The older g irls described more of the content and began to demonstrate a knowledge of the purpose of the commercials. J i l l said commercials showed "all kinds of stuff . . . beds at K-Mart . . . good things to eat . . . things to buy at the store." Reflecting the growing skepticism about commercials that the older children began developing, a six year old added "they (comnercials) tell you something that's not true just so 126 you'd buy it." If it can be said the children, for the most part, wer6 not big fans of commercials, then they were most definitely not big fans of news either.
F>4-20 The children associated the news with bad and "yuckie" things and were sometimes frightened by the news stories.
The children described the news as programs that "talk about things" and " te l1(s) you what's happening,good or bad." Unlike with commercials, the children seemed to have less difficulty describing what the "news" was. This may be in part due to the fa c t that news programs are called and identified as "the news" on the television whereas commercials do not enjoy this same kind of labeling by te le vision announcers. When commercials are id e n tifie d , frequently, euphemisms such as "a word from our sponsor" or "message from our sponsor" are used in lieu of the word commercial. Also, the news formats are not as varied and thus perhaps less confusing to the children.
Most of the children did not like the news. Donnie said, "I
HATE itS" J i l l explained on news programs "they show yuckie things and t e ll bad things." Kay reported she did not lik e the news because it frightened her, especially when there were stories about tornadoes.
Making Sense of Television Program Content
p4-21 Children as young as three years old began developing a "television literacy" or an understanding of what certain television cues meant or predicted.
The children demonstrated that they were learning what certain television cues meant in terms of predicting what would happen next on the television screens. Many of these cues adults usually take for 127 granted. Three-year-old Marcie frequently announced, "That's a lii" as soon as the closing musical themes began playing on television programs watched a t the day care center. I t appeared that she re a lly enjoyed and prided herself in being able to "predict" when a program was getting ready to end.
S im ilarly, six-year-old Chuckie also appeared to be quite proud when he explained that when the TV announcer says "stay tuned" fo r a particular program, i t meant that that particular program was coming on next.
p4-22 ™e children creatively interpreted and reconstructed television program content into meaningful "gestalts" which in some cases required adding "new" events.
The children did not always understand why characters behaved in certain ways, even though frequently they could accurately describe what the characters did. On some occasions, the children would also add events that did not happen when recounting what they had seen on the television screen. More specifically, it appears that the children would take the data from the television program which impressed them and/or the data which they remembered, and then or ganize that data into a "gestalt" or presentation that made sense to them. Because the children's life experiences were limited and because th e ir thought processes were perceptually bound, the data and logic the children used to make sense of television content necessarily could lead to assessments of content different from those made by adults. 128
In summary, the consumption and preference data in this report generally supported findings in previous research and indicated that the children in this study were normal consumers of television. The present findings also indicated that when collecting data about preschoolers' experiences with television, at minimum, both the children and their parents should be interviewed.
Important contributions these findings offered to the study of preschool children and television were the clear articulation of several assumptions that these young viewers make about te le v is io n , identification of constructs the children use to determine what's real and what's pretend on television, and the identification of television program and character elements that were especially a ttra c tive to preschoolers.
The evidence here suggested that the preschoolers' process of assigning meaning to television and its content reflected the young children's perceptual boundedness. The evidence also reflected that developmental changes, in relationship to processing televisio n -fare, were gradual and somewhat linear. Furthermore, the evidence sug gested that while some of the children's assumptions about television at firs t may have seemed highly idiosyncratic, that in fact the crea tiv e responses or assumptions made by these "cognitively lim ited" children were the same responses that have been made by young child ren since television entered homes in the late forties and the fifties.
For example, the assumption that people actually liv e in television sets was-made by the researcher and many of her students at the times they were preschoolers. Dorr (1977) also discussed young children 129 wondering about the people in th e ir TV sets.
F in a lly , this research suggested that program and character elements which have been reported to be attractive to school-age children were also found to be a ttra ctiv e to preschool children, some as young as three years old. Hence, the foundation that affects how school age children interact with television begins developing when the children are quite young and these foundations continue to influence the children after they have begun their formal education. 130
Footnotes
iwo or more parents had to report a favorite program for that program to be reported as a parent id e n tifie d program. The same criterion was used with the children.
interesting to note, the children did not specifically report television gave them ideas for their play, while the parents did report that their children's use of television materials in play was widespread. CHAPTER V
RESULTS I I I : TELEVISION-BASED PLAY AND TALK
IN THE TELEVIEWING CONTEXT
A major assumption underlying this research e ffo rt was that the
role of television in the lives of preschool children could be better understood by observing the children's television based play and talk in both television viewing situations and non-television viewing situations. This chapter reports the results of the observations made by the researcher, the children's parents, the day care center teachers and the children themselves.
While watching television, the children learned a lot of infor mation about regularly appearing characters (and person alities), programs, and commercials. S p ecifically, the children learned how and what the characters talked about; how the characters moved, used their bodies, interacted with others; and what kinds of clothes, artifacts, and objects the characters wore, carried and used. From the programs (and probably each other) the children learned simple, basic, predictable themes and orders of events and presentations, e.g., according to six-year-old Melissa on the cartoon Scooby Poo, "Scooby
Doo always gets lo s t, and he has to solve a mystery about a monster."
During this learning process, more subtle themes and variations may have been beyond the "grasp" or comprehension of the children or
131 132 the children may have decided those variations were not "fun" or important.
In the children's culture, there was a growing, everchanging
"group knowledge" about a p articu lar set of television characters and programs. This knowledge was revealed, in part, in the children's play and talk.
One of the most intriguing findings related to this "group knowledge" was that the children developed, specific sets of behaviors around some of these characters, program content, and program formats.
The discussion below identifies and explicates these "sets" of behavior in the televiewing context. Chapter VI does the same for behaviors in the non-televiewing contexts. In the present chapter, the individual acts the children displayed while watching television are reported. Then an argument is put forth that the children used various combinations of these acts and developed ritu a ls or games around three regularly viewed television programs. F in a lly , these
"games" are analyzed in terms of (1) their variations, ( 2) th e ir relationship to more traditional forms of play, (3) the uses and consequences of these games on the children and th e ir culture, and
(4) developmental, sex, and race related trends.
Television-Based Play and Talk in the Televiewing Context
At the day care center, the children almost always watched tele vision with other children. In this context, the children were very much active viewers. They seldom, i f ever, sat s ile n tly in one spot with eyes glued to the screen fo r an entire th irty minute program. 133
Instead, they talked, played, walked around and engaged in a variety of activities and behaviors that were related to what was on the screen. (See also Allen as cited in Comstock, 1978; Anderson & Lorch,
1979; Bechtel, Achelpohl, & Akers, 1972; J. R. Brown, 1976; Field as cited in Winick & Winick, 1979; Krull & Husson, 1979; LoSciuto, 1972;
Lyle & Hoffman, 1972; Noble, 1975; Reid & Frazer, 1980; Winick &
Winick, 1979.) Based on the observations of the children while they watched several different television programs, over sixty "during- television-viewing" acts were identified. These acts, divided into verbal and vocal acts during television viewing and into nonverbal acts during television viewing, are discussed below.
Verbal and Vocal Acts During Television Viewing
In the televiewing context at the day care center, the children were active. Figure 1 identifies over thirty individual verbal and vocal behaviors the children in this research were identified to engage in while they watched television . These behaviors were grouped together into three major categories: ( 1) verbal interactions with other children and adults, ( 2) verbal announcements about s e lf in re lation to TV content and TV viewing, and (3) verbal and vocal inter actions with TV and TV content.
Verbal interactions with other children and adults. One of the most frequent forms of activity during television viewing was talking to others in the same context (also see Reid & Frazer, 1980 and
Winick & Winick, 1979). Sometimes these verbal acts were directly related to what was being viewed a t the time. Other ta lk was not 134
Verbal Interaction with Other Children and Adults
1. Id e n tifie s program, objects, characters on the screen. 2. Offers unsolicited explanations of what has happened on the screen. 3. Corrects the observations of other children. 4. Asks questions about the content on television . 5. Answers questions about the content on television. 6. Predicts or te lls what is going to happen next on a program. 7. Calls attention to what is happening on the screen. 8 . Offers an opinion about what is seen on television. 9. Talks about other TV programs with others. 10. Talks about non-TV content with others. 11. Negotiates and requests what programs w ill be watched. 12. Is told or tells someone to be quiet. 13. Is told or tells someone to stop obstructing the view of the TV. 14. Is told or tells someone to leave the room. 15. Participates in "chanting."
Verbal Announcements about Self in Relation to TV Content and TV Viewing
1. Says she or he is somebody on TV. 2. Says she or he has, wants, or is getting something seen on TV. 3. Says she or he has been, is going, or wants to go someplace seen on TV. 4. Says she or he can do or has done something seen on TV. 5. Say she or he has seen or knows what is going to happen on a particular TV program and/or episode. 6. Says she or he can or is allowed to watch TV or any TV program whenever he or she wants to watch. 7. Says she or he likes or does not lik e a program, character, object, or product seen on TV. 8 . Relates TV content to a description of self.
Verbal and Vocal Interactions with TV and TV Content
1. Sings along with the TV. 2. Repeats sounds and "weird noises" heard on TV. 3. Repeats verbal phrases, le tte rs , and numbers heard on TV. 4. Answers questions asked by the TV. 5. Corrects perceived errors made by characters on TV. 6. Screams, shouts, says "yeah," "yech," "wow." 7. Laughs. 8 . Responds to greetings made by TV characters. 9. Responds to directives made by TV characters. 10. Attempts to read w ritten language appearing on the screen.
Figure 1. Children's verbal and vocal acts during television viewing. 135
d ire c tly related to what was being watched.
P- The children talked to other children and adults about the ' context they were watching on TV and about the act of watching TV.
At least eight kinds of talk were identified in this sub-division.
Among the most popular of these acts was the children identifying or
naming characters, objects, and programs that appeared on the screen.
On Sesame Street, when an object appeared on the screen, the children would name it. If the object was unfamiliar, the children would call i t by the name of something that was fa m ilia r to them and/or ask an older child or an adult what the object was. One day a buggy appeared on the screen during Sesame S treet.
Melissa: A car. Holly: A car. J i l l : A buggy. Holly: A car or a buggy. TV: A buggy. J i l l : See, a buggy. BUGGY. Melissa: Buggy.
While watching Star Trek several children, especially the younger ones, were frequently confused by what they saw on the screen. In one episode, Bobby called an "alien space ship" a "giant ravioli." In another episode, two four-year-old boys, Donnie and Pete, and one five-year-old boy, Bobby, had the following discussion when firs t a giant hand appeared on the screen, and then a space ship appeared.
Donnie: Whose hand is that? Pete: Giant hand is gone, right? Donnie: What is that? Pete: It's a kite. Donnie: I t is not, rig h t Bobby? Bobby: It 's a space ship. 136
In addition to identifying objects, characters, and programs, the children also labeled and explained the actions appearing on the screen. While watching Mickey Mouse, J ill saw a scene where a dog and a bear were doing something together.
J i l l : They're trying to dance. Joannie: I see them fighting each other.
Joannie was rig h t. On an episode of Star Trek, Bobby did not under stand where an object that had been moving in space went. The next scene cut to a shot of "Spock" and Bobby reported, "He (Spock) put that thing in his ear!" Bobby was wrong.
As has already been illustrated above, the children also asked questions about the content, answered questions about the content, and when someone was wrong in his or her observation, that person was frequently corrected. A further illustration of the "corrective explanation" occurred during a segment of Sesame S treet, when Donnie and J i l l disagreed about what had appeared on the screen.
Donnie: Black man. Jill: Whiteman. Donnie: Black man. J i l l : White man.
On this particular occasion, they were both right. They each had looked at the screen at a different time, and when they looked they had seen d iffe re n t men.
Another verbal activity related to the content on television involved the children telling other people to look at something on
TV. During a commercial for a toy where a minor co llisio n occurred,
Donnie shouted, "WATCH THIS—BOOM!" When the announcement fo r the
Emergency Broadcasting Test came on, Bobby and several other older 137 boys said, "Watch th is!" On a segment of Sesame S treet, a ll the children in the room were busy doing other things, when suddenly J ill looked up at the screen, saw something interesting and said "Watch."
All the children stopped what they were doing and watched the screen along with J i l l . During Mickey Mouse, a segment with a magician elicited a "wow-1ook-at-that" statement from one of the boys. Those who were not looking at the screen at that moment did so.
Related to calling others' attention to what was on the screen was the act of some children predicting what was going to happen next.
Many of the "watch this" statements were in reference to a program or commercial the child had seen before. Interesting to note, the children really seemed to enjoy successfully predicting what was going to happen next. This reaction was not only demonstrated during daily viewing of programs at the center, but i t was dramatically re-empha sized when the researcher reshowed the children the video-tapes they had seen during the interview period. The children were continually saying "watch this" and attempting to tell the others what was going to happen next. They also requested to see the video tapes replayed several times.
Finally, the children and adults engaged in talk that negotiated what programs would be watched. Usually, the same programs were watched each day, so the negotiation in itself became very predic table. Most of the negotiation occurred in the afternoon for Mickey
Mouse and Star Trek. On a small number of occasions, the six- and seven-year-old boys tried to convince the other children to watch
Star Trek instead of Mickey Mouse. Iro n ic a lly , Star Trek came on 138
a fte r Mickey Mouse. I f the older boys pressed th e ir point, the
teacher in the backroom called for a vote. In this case, the older
boys always lo s t, and frequently retreated to the playground in defeat.
The next point of negotiation occurred as Mickey Mouse was coming to
a close. The request here was to watch Star Trek. As with watching
Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse, a child usually asked to watch the
program and a teacher said the equivalent of yes.
Bobby: (As Mickey Mouse was going o ff) Can we watch Sta"r Trek? Teacher: I don't care. Bobby: GOODY!
In addition to talk directly related to what was on the screen,
there was talk which was not directly related to the screen content.
p5_2 The children talked to other children and adults about topics not directly related to what they were watching on TV.
The children participated in at least five different categories
of ta lk not d ire c tly related to what was being viewed on TV at the
time. These topics dealt with other TV programs, request or instruc
tions for the receiver to enact a specific behavior in the TV viewing
context, and other non-TV related topics.
The first of these topics dealt with TV related content, e.g.,
talking about programs not currently on the screen. At the beginning of watching Mickey Mouse one day, Jerry announced he had watched
Howdy Dood.y that morning. During Mickey Mouse, Bobby frequently
asked i f the children could watch Star Trek next. While watching
Sesame Street one day, J i l l and others were talking about "Wonder
Woman" and "Batman." 139
The behavioral request and instructions included children and adults requesting the receiver "be quiet" so others could hear the television. Almost all children had been requested or told to "be quiet" according to the field notes and teacher reports. Frequent recipients of this request included Donnie, Bobby, Chuckie, and J ill.
A second request was for the receiver to stop obstructing the speaker's or other's view of the television screen. This activity frequently occurred at the beginning of a program as the children were coming in the room and getting seated. It also occurred during the program when some children started moving and walking around and watching the a c tiv itie s of those not watching television. Young children, especially three-year-old children and some four-year-old children, were most "guilty" of this activity. It also occurred when at least one child, Donnie, deliberately stood directly in front of the television screen so no one could see the screen except him.
Typical requests included the "move-I-can't-see's" and the "Donnie
(or whatever child)-is-in-my-way's."
A third request was for a child to stop disturbing another child who might be watching television or sleeping. One day when Charlie fe ll asleep on the floor, several children admonished one another to leave Charlie alone and let him sleep. When other children fell asleep (which was not a common occurrence), a teacher might also make the same request of the other children. A more frequent request, how ever, was fo r a child to stop h ittin g another. Donnie and Bobby were probably the greatest offenders in this area. A final request was that a child was invited or instructed to leave the room. This 140 in v ita tio n was extended when one child or a teacher wanted another to go outside or into the big room to play. In one case Bobby was in the backroom watching Sesame S tree t.
Holly: (Enters the room and sees Sesame Street on the screen.) I don't want to see th is . (She sits and watches the screen.) Bobby: (Two minutes la te r .) Come on, Holly, let's play Star Trek. (They leave the room together.)
In another case Bobby entered the room while others were watching
Star Trek. (One of the few times he was not already in the room.)
Bobby: Lookey, lookey, Jack can't get me! Jack: (No reply as he continues watching a fight scene.)
Bobby also became engrossed in the fig h t scene and remained in the room instead of going back outside.
Verbal announcements about self in relation to TV content and TV viewing.
Pc _3 The children made several statements that related their personal experiences, needs and wants, and percep tions of themselves, with the content they saw on tele vision.
At least eight self-reference verbal behaviors were noted in this category. It was interesting to note that at least two of these behaviors were more frequently associated with commercials than other program formats.
The firs t behavior involved the children saying they were some body on TV ju s t prior to that person's appearance on the screen, during th at person's appearance on the screen, or ju s t a fte r that person's appearance on the screen. This behavior frequently occurred during Star Trek and it occurred every day with Mickey Mouse. 141
Occasionally it occurred during Sesame Street. However, the most popular time for this activity was during the "Showtime" segment on
Mickey Mouse where the Mouseketeers were introduced.
Chip: I'm Pop! Kay: I'm Kelly! Jill: I'm Julie! Holly: I'm Lisa! Bobby: I'm Todd! Donnie: I'm Scott!
Some children lik e Chip, Kay, and J ill always said they were the same characters. Others, like Donnie, would sometimes switch iden tities. An interesting variation of this verbal activity was when two children tried to assume the same identity.
Pete: I'm Todd! Bobby: I'm Todd! Pete: I'm Todd!
Another child might enter this disagreement siding with either boy.
Holly: (To Pete) You can't be Todd! Bobby's Todd!
The children seldom, if ever, spent much time trying to resolve this disagreement because i t appeared they soon forgot about i t as they continued watching the program.
The Star Trek "I-am-somebody-else" activity usually included the boys who were watching the program saying they were eith er "Captain
Kirk" or "Spock." Any girls who might be watching the program (girls were not regular viewers of this program) might attempt to assume the identity of the leading female guest star.
Jack: I'm Captain Kirk! Charlie: I'm Spock! Joannie: I'm that girl! 142
Again, as in Mickey Mouse, some children always assumed the same
id e n tity when watching the program; Bobby was almost always "Spock."
The next behavior was frequently associated with commercials for
toys and was the most frequent form of verbal behavior reported by the
teachers. Specifically, this was the "I-want/have/am getting-one-of- those," where "those" usually referred to a toy. All children were reported and/or observed to engage in this form of behavior. In par tic u la r, one commercial that appeared during Mickey Mouse fo r a "wiz wheel" almost always resulted in one or more children saying, "I have one!" or "I'm getting one!" One variation of this response was when a child could not say he or she had one, but instead reported they knew someone else who had one. One day during this comnercial Bobby reported, "My cousin Teddy got one of those!"
Closely related to the above behavior was another which occurred during the viewing of some commercials and during Mickey Mouse. This was the "I-have been/am going/want-to-go-to-that-place" behavior.
Here the children usually referred to an amusement park advertised or to Disneyland. Again, almost a ll children were observed or reported to engage in this form of behavior. Responding to a scene of Disney land on Mickey Mouse, two children one day reported the following:
J i l l : Next year, I'm going there! Marcie: I go there!
For a commercial of an amusement park, three-year-old Marcie also reported, "We going there!"
Being able to do or having done something seen on TV was another verbal behavior observed. Here the children reported they could do 143 what the people on TV did. For example, in a commercial where a child accomplished a specific task involving a toy, Donnie responded,
"I do that!"
The children also announced the TV programs and episodes they had seen before and reported they knew what was going to happen next.
At least one child frequently announced he could watch TV whenever he wanted. Others shared information about th e ir desires to watch te le vision. During a Star Trek episode one child announced, "This was on la s t night!" During another episode of Star Trek, Bobby shared this feeling:
Bobby: I'm going to watch TV a ll day! Teacher: Why? Bobby: 'Cause Star Trek is going to be on a ll day! (after which he offered a "devilish" smile).
On occasion, the children offered th e ir personal opinions about television,content, programs, formats, and characters. This activity frequently happened during Star Trek.
Carol: I hate Spock. Jil 1: I love him.
On several occasions Bobby expressed his love for both "Captain Kirk" and "Spock." Opinions were also offered during other programs.
Chuckie: (During Mickey Mouse) I hate "Mousekamovies"!
Marcie: (During Sesame Street cartoon showing fruits and vegetables) I like apples! I don't like those.
And, finally, the children sometimes used television content as a cue to describe something about themselves. During Sesame S treet, the number "5" appeared on the screen. 144
Holly: I'm five! Melissa: My birthday was yesterday. I'm six!
During Mickey Mouse, J ill frequently announced she was "Julie" because,
"I look like her!"
The next set of verbal behaviors involved the children directly interacting with television content and television itself.
Verbal and vocal interactions with TV and TV content.
Pg_4 The children talked to the television and repeated things they heard on television.
At least ten different behaviors were classified in this cate gory (see also Anderson & Lorch, 1979; Noble, 1975; Winick & Winick,
1979). The firs t behaviors included the children singing along with the "TV," repeating sounds and "weird" noises heard on TV, and re peating verbal phrases, alphabet letters, and numbers heard on TV.
These behaviors were mostly observed to occur during Sesame S treet,
Mickey Mouse, and commercials. Singing the introduction song to
Mickey Mouse occurred every day, and even some of the children as young as three years old sang the complete song very w ell. During two conmercials in particular the children repeated sounds and noises. In a commercial fo r Nestles Crunch, at a certain point in the commercial the children said, "Crunch." In a commercial for a cereal, the child ren mimicked a character in the ad by saying, "Wooo, wooo, wooo." And, during conmercials and during Sesame Street, the children repeated words they heard.
TV: F irs t, . . . Jill: (racing ahead of the TV) F irs t, second, third ! TV: ... middle, last. Melissa: No, first, middle, last. 145
Also during Sesame Street, the children enjoyed participating and singing le tte r and number songs.
Another set of behaviors closely related to Sesame Street was that of the children answering the questions asked by characters on
TV, te llin g the TV i t had made a mistake, responding to greetings made by TV characters, and responding to directives made by TV charac ters. During Sesame Street there were segments of the program where the children were asked specific questions.
TV: Let's play a game. I'm thinking of an animal whose name rhymes with "trio n ." He's a fierce animal. Can you t e ll me what animal I'm thinking of? Children: LION!
TV: (Commercial) What time is it? Children: It 's "Howdy Doody Time"!
When TV characters offered the children friendly greetings, the children sometimes returned those greetings.
"Mickey Mouse": Hi, Mouseketeers! Children: Hi, Mickey!
On Sesame Street there were segments where the children could iden tify correct and incorrect behaviors and attitudes. When the child ren spotted an incorrect or incongruous behavior, they sometimes told the TV i t was wrong. During one p articu lar scene, a man was trying to lie down in a nest and "Big Bird" was trying to lie down in a bed.
The children watching the program screamed, "No, no, no!" The child ren appeared to be quite satisfied when the man and "Big Bird" ex changed places. When the TV gave the children a directive or requested a specific immediate behavior of the children, they 146 frequently responded by doing what they were asked to do.
TV: Let's hear it for Capital N! Melissa: YEAH!
Two vocal behaviors included the "yeah's" (as described above),
"yech's," and other such expressions and, second, laughter. Both forms of behavior were heard every day during television viewing. As indicated earlier, the children "yeahed" at the beginning and at various points in Mickey Mouse including when cartoons came on. They laughed at things they thought to be funny, and this laughter was more associated with Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse (also see Field as cited in Winick & Winick, 1979).
One final verbal behavior is described below.
Chanting. Chanting was a popular activity associated with tele vision viewing at the center.
p5-5 The children chanted the names of television programs they liked and wanted to see.
The biggest chanting a c tiv ity of the day was fo r Mickey Mouse. While waiting fo r the program to come on, the children chanted "We want
'Mickey,' we want 'Mickey'." Sometimes this chant started on the playground and the children continued i t un til the program began—that is unless some other activity began in the interim.
Chanting also accompanied viewing of Star Trek, but to a much lesser extent. There was more variety in the Star Trek chant. The three observed versions were (1) "We want Star Trek!", (2) "Star Trek,
Star Trek," and (3) "We want Four, we want Four" (referrin g to the television channel on which Star Trek was). 147
In summary, the children engaged in at least four general cate gories of verbal and vocal behaviors during television viewing:
(1) verbal interactions with other children and adults, (2) verbal
announcements about s e lf in rela tio n to TV content and TV viewing,
(3) verbal and vocal interactions with TV and TV content, and
(4) chanting behavior.
It was interesting to note the lack of clear or strong age and sex differences in the children's use of these verbal behaviors.
One area where some differences were suggested included the verbal announcements about self in relatio n to TV content and TV viewing.
At least one three-year-old subject had more comments in this category than in any other category. This was not necessarily the case for the older subjects. Also of note was that the younger subjects in general were much less vocal than the older subjects, particularly the five- and six-year-old children. One exception was Donnie, a four-year-old boy who played with the older children. When the younger children were vocal, they tended to speak more s o ftly than the older ones.
The discussion now turns to nonverbal behaviors during television vi ewi ng.
Nonverbal Behavior and Movement During Television Viewing'
Over th irty individual nonverbal behaviors enacted by the children as they watched television were identified in the present study (see Figure 2). These nonverbal behaviors were grouped into three categories: (1) attention-related acts, (2) body movements, and 148
Attention-Related Acts
1. Watches the television screen. 2. Watches the activities of others in the room. 3. Looks at other objects in the room, e.g., a book. 4. Looks out the window. 5. Sleeps
Body Movements
1. Smi1es. 2. Opens eyes and/or mouth widely. 3. Covers up face, eyes, ears. 4. "Mouths" the words to songs. 5. Claps. 6. Waves at characters on the screen. 7. Points at characters, objects, programs on the screen. 8. Plays with or manipulates parts of the body and clothing. 9. Plays with or manipulates objects such as books, toys. 10. Bounces up and down. 11. "Curls up" body at scary content. 12. Moves limbs in a regular pattern or motion. 13. Stands. 14. Dances. 15. Stands on head. 16. S its . 17. Eats (reported in home data) 18. Plays with other children.
Spatial Dynamics
1. Stays in the room fo r the entire program. 2. Changes seats. 3. Leaves the room. 4. Gets in line. 5. Stands in front of the TV. 6. Runs and jumps. 7. Enters the room a fte r a program has begun. 8. Goes to the window, bookcase, or other locations in the room. 9. Sits with a teacher or on a teacher's lap. 10. Has physical contact with other children, e.g., hitting, hugging, wrestling.
Figure 2. Children's nonverbal acts during television viewing. 149
(3) spatial dynamics. These behaviors, as with the verbal behaviors, were often d ire c tly related to what was on the television screen at the time the nonverbal behavior(s) occurred.
Attention-related acts (eye contact with the television screen).
Continuous, non-interrupted eye contact with the television screen for a one-half hour period by the children was simply not observed to
happen. In addition to watching the screen, the children watched the activities of others in the room and in the hall, looked at books and game m aterials, looked out the window, and f e ll asleep.
Pc Program formats, the attractiveness of characters, action 6 scenes, unusual noises, music, and some camera movement and editing techniques were related to the attention children directed towards the television screen.
The program format that best held the children's attention was the cartoon. Most children intently watched the screen with few, if any, glances away from the screen until the cartoon was over or a commercial came on. I f , however, the cartoon got to be a l i t t l e "long" some children might have begun periodically glancing around the room, but their attention almost always turned back to the cartoon.
Children's non-cartoon programming was also popular with the children; however, the features in these programs that usually at tracted the most attention were those that were animated, e.g., cartoons during Mickey Mouse. Other features that attracted the children's attention were musical segments that were repeated from program to program, e .g ., "Showtime" on Mickey Mouse. Here, as in other programs, the children were apparently attracted to program 150 segments that were fa m ilia r, predictable, and ones in which they could participate. News, soap operas, and other programs labeled by the children as "Big People's Stuff" were the least a ttra c tiv e programs at the center and the children never watched these programs during this research.
Some commercials also attracted the attention of the children, particularly those that advertised toys, foods, and amusement parks.
Frequently, the ads that were geared fo r the child audience, e .g ., commercials that were animated, had " liv e ly ," "peppy" music, "weird noises" and had child actors and actresses were the commercials that attracted the most attention. As with the programs described above, the children seemed particularly attracted to conmercials that were fa m ilia r, predictable, and ones in which they could p articip ate. There were, of course, another set of commercials in which the children appeared not to be very interested. This was, in part, revealed by their lack of attention to these commercials and their willingness to talk about and do other things during those commercials.
Based on observations, the characters that received the most attention from the children were, in order, (1) cartoon characters,
(2) muppets (and animals), and (3) children. Adults received the least attention. There were, however, some po ten tially important age differences. Cartoon characters were universally a ttra c tiv e to a ll age groups. Muppets (and animals) were more a ttra c tiv e to younger children than they were to older children, and muppets were more at tra c tiv e to g irls than to boys. During Sesame Street the most popular 151 segments were the animated numbers and le tte rs and the muppets. In contrast to these scenes were scenes with talking and singing adults.
Frequently, the children ignored the latter segments and instead
"talked, played," left the room, or in general, looked for something else to do until something "good" came on again.
The powerful adult figures (non-animated) were more attractive to the older children and to the boys. The most loyal viewers of the program watched with solely adults, Star Trek, were the boys five years old and older. For a ll the children, non-powerful adults were the least a ttra c tiv e characters in terms of attention given those characters when those characters appeared on the screen.
The actions of the characters were also factors in gaining and maintaining the children's attention. With the younger children, the
"numbers," " le tte rs ," and muppets on Sesame Street attracted more attention when those "characters" were engaged in movement, especially quick movement, and when there were loud or excited voices, music, and/or weird noises. Similarly, when watching Star Trek, the child ren focused the most attention on scenes where "Captain Kirk" and
"Spock" were involved in high action, physical struggles, e.g., fighting,and on scenes where there were raised, loud, and excited voices, fast music, and weird noises. During scenes in Star Trek where quiet-to-normal dialogue with little physical movement was dominant, the children often talked, played, or turned their atten tion to something else. When the high action returned, so did their attention return to the screen. Nonverbal mediated variables that attracted and maintained the children's attention included music, animation, and camera cutting action. The former two have been discussed above. A footnote to the discussion on music was the faster the rhythm and the louder the music, the more likely the children would turn their attention to the screen and keep their attention on the screen. On camera cutting action, the quicker the cutting action, the stronger the children's attention appeared to be. Of course, quick cutting action was usually accompanied by fast music, fast physical action, etc. While this method of research, of course, cannot separate the impact of each of these variables, it is important to note what behavior went with what on-television activity (see Anderson & Lorch, 1979; Krull &
Husson, 1979; Lesser, 1974).
In terms of age, i t appeared that the three-year-old children were not as attentive to television as were their older peers. No sex differences, in general, were noted.
Body movements. The children's bodies were often moving as they sat in one spot during the course of a television program.
Pp The children did different things with their faces, hands, limbs, and bodies as they watched TV.
Face. The children often showed their pleasure, excitement, and fear during television viewing. Some such as J ill and Mitch smiled at the screen and at children and adults present when there was some thing on the screen they enjoyed. When re a lly "caught up" or in te r ested in the activity on the screen, the children exhibited various degrees of "wide-eyed, open-mouthed" amazement. Bobby, Donnie, and 153
Pete frequently displayed this behavior as they watched Star Trek.
During scary scenes, Melissa and others covered th e ir eyes or th e ir entire faces. And on some occasions, Chip, instead of singing aloud the words to a song, s ile n tly "mouthed" the words.
Hands. When programs came on the children re a lly enjoyed, they clapped. This was a universal reaction for cartoons. The children clapped when the cartoons came on and they clapped when the cartoons went off, although the latter clapping was not quite as loud or en thusiastic. Melissa and Holly and a few others also clapped to the rhythm of some songs on Sesame S treet.
In addition to clapping, when TV characters waved at the child ren, Holly and J i l l , and several younger children waved back. Bobby,
Donnie, and Marcie frequently sucked their thumbs while watching tele vision and, occasionally, Mitch sucked his fingers. Children also used their hands to manipulate and play with parts of their body or clothing. J ill twisted her hair. Holly and others sometimes held their shoes and feet. Bobby held his crotch. Several children manip ulated or played with other objects while watching television.
Melissa watched Sesame Street while looking through books. When she decided not to look at books, she often joined J ill and Donnie to play with a boxed game.
One final use of the hands noted during this research was that of the children pointing to the screen. This pointing behavior frequent ly accompanied verbal behavior. During a segment of Mickey Mouse,
Donnie, Eric, and Mitch pointed at the activity on the screen. During the children's verbal games of "I want," "I am," and "I am going," 154 they frequently pointed to the television stimulus of their comment.
Limbs and body. The children's bodies often demonstrated some of th e ir reactions to programs. A cartoon the children re a lly enjoyed resulted in some of them "bouncing up and down" in excitement. Donnie bounced his body to the rhythm of some music as he watched TV.
Nakiba and Erin, two three-year-old g ir ls , also bounced to the rhythm of the music. A program the children considered "scary" resulted in some such as Melissa "curling up" on her chair or tensely bringing in her arms and legs close to the rest of her body. Other actions the children engaged in while watching television included J ill doing
"ballerina" dances as she watched Sesame S treet, and Marcie and others standing as they watched Sesame Street, particularly if they were just entering the room and the TV content quickly caught their attention. Marcie and another three year old, Kim, jumped up and down on certain numbers during Sesame Street segments on numbers. J ill and other older children jumped over boxes and other children during
Sesame Street and during Star Trek. On at least one occasion, six- year-old Hal stood on his head as he watched Star Trek and Nakiba and
Erin played "Pat-a-cake" during Mickey Mouse.
The children engaged in actions which included moving th e ir arms and legs in regular, sometimes rhythmic patterns or motions. While sitting in adult-size chairs, some children swang their legs during viewing.
And fin a lly , among the more complex uses of the body was when the children imitated the actions of characters on the screen. These actions could include dancing as well as fig h tin g . 155
Spatial dynamics. Watching TV was not a stationary a c tiv ity for the children.
P5 o The children did different things with "space" as they watched TV.
One frequent activity for the children was to change seats during a program (also see Winick & Winick, 1979). This involved moving from one floor position to another floor position, a chair position, etc.
A variety of factors appeared to be related to this movement„ In general, the fewer the children in the room, the more the movement, but this was not to suggest that there was no movement when the room was "jammed packed," because regardless of how crowded the room was, some children always moved. Another factor which affected or was related to the movement was the program itself. If the children lost interest in the program or something else other than the program attracted their attention, the children sometimes left the room. This frequently happened during Sesame Street and Star Trek, but not neces sarily Mickey Mouse. If the distracted children decided not to leave the room, they did things such as jumping over other children and furniture and going to the bookcase to get a book.
Donnie sometimes appeared to move in d iffe re n t areas so as to maximize the attention he received from others. When a ll else fa ile d , he stood directly in front of the television screen. Others also stood d ire c tly in fro n t of the screen, but fo r seemingly d iffe re n t reasons. When some of the younger ones such as Marcie or Mitch stood in fro n t of the screen, i t was as i f they forgot others were watching or thought because the others looked lik e they were doing something 156 else, they assumed no one else was watching. Other older children, disgusted with the noise level, sometimes moved up closer to the screen so they could hear better.
The children who stayed in the room for the conclusion of a program often were prepared to begin to engage in a new a c tiv ity almost immediately, especially at the end of Sesame Street (which was followed by "Naptime") and at the end of Mickey Mouse (which was followed by playing outside for most). Specifically, at the end or seconds before the end of these programs the children would jump up and run to either get in lin e to leave or; i f there was no lin e being formed, jump up and run to get out of the room.
Finally, the need or desire to have human physical contact with the teachers was frequently demonstrated by children fiv e years old and under and girls six years old. This activity was manifested as the children sat "next" to the teachers, leaned against the teachers, sat on the teachers' laps, or laid their heads and arms on the teachers. The older boys very seldom engaged in this form of activity.
Another less socially-acceptable form of contact was through the act of h ittin g . Donnie, Bobby, and Alan were among the frequent
"offenders" here.
In summary, watching television was very much a dynamic a c tiv ity
—both verbally and nonverbally—for the children at the day care center. It is important to note that given the opportunity for group viewing of television, the children had more opportunity to interact with others and compare their perceptions of television with those around them. 157
The Game of Watching Television: A Description
P5 q The children developed sets of combined ac-ts which they enacted on a regular basis during the viewing o f some television programs.
The behavior of the children during television viewing frequently varied depending on the program they were watching. In other words, the children exhibited various levels of "rule-governed" or predic table behaviors during the viewing of p articu lar programs. To illu s tra te this phenomenon, the behaviors that developed around the three regularly viewed television programs at the day care center are briefly described below. These descriptions, of course, utlilize the individual verbal and nonverbal acts presented above. The discussion begins with the program that came on f ir s t in the day.
Sesame Street
Sesame Street was the least frequently watched of the three programs. A fter lunch on some days a small number of children would go to the backroom instead of outside to play, and Sesame Street was usually turned on. The most consistent viewers of the programs almost always did something else while Sesame Street was on, e.g., reading a book, playing a game, negotiating the rules for a game, running or jumping, etc. What was the most interesting about their behavior was that they had certain parts of the program where they would stop what they were doing and watch the screen. For Melissa, J ill, and Holly, when objects appeared on the screen, they interrupted their behavior to name those objects.
Holly: There's four feet. There's five feet. 158 and
J i l l : That's Donald Duck. Melissa: That's Big Bird.
J ill, in particular, liked to stop when she anticipated being able to make "noises." During a game one day, J ill said the following:
J i l l : Let me see this monster. (The monster appeared on the screen and went "awwwhhhggg") Melissa: Play! (Get back to the game.) J i l l : Awwwhhhggg!
The le tte r and the number games were among the most popular parts of the show fo r the children. They looked forward to them, and they knew the cues that predicted those "games" were about to start.
For example, when the number "5" appeared on the screen, J ill announced, "We're going to play fiveJ" "Going to play" meant they were going to sing, answer TV-asked questions, and repeat the numbers along with the television.
When adults appeared on the screen, the children frequently stopped watching the screen. As soon as the closing song began, two d iffe re n t announcements were made. The three- and four-year-old children announced the program was over.
Donnie: I t 's over (Pause). (The closing song continues. The program ends.) I told you it's over.
The second announcement was fo r naptime which the end of Sesame Street meant in the culture of the children. Children in the room would run outside chanting "Naptime, Naptime." Others, like Donnie, might offer reasons why he should not have to take a nap, e .g ., "My mommy said I didn't hafta!" 159 Mickey Mouse
, The program with the biggest audience of the day was Mickey
Mouse. During the day, some children such as Mitch anticipated the
program and talked about i t and asked the teachers to be sure they
d id n 't forget to t e ll him when "Mickey" came on. When the actual
time for Mickey Mouse came, that was when the game began.
"We want Mickey, we want Mickey" the children chanted as they
marched into the backroom from the playground and big room. Continu
ing to chant, they took th e ir seats on the floor and on the adu lt
sized chairs in the back of the room. The chanting sometimes stopped when commercials came on that advertised products they were interested
in or commercials they liked. The chanting sometimes turned into the game of "I-am-a-Mouseketeer" prior to the program appearing on the
screen. On rare occasions, some of the six- and seven-year-old boys trie d to get the younger children to agree to watch something other
than Mickey Mouse. The older boys never succeeded. I f the chanting and other forms of verbal behavior got and remained very loud, the teacher in the room told the children in the room to be quiet—or even worse—she turned the TV o ff! A momentary, restless silence then came over the room, until the music for Mickey Mouse started. The children now cheered, clapped, and bounced in their seats.
When the introductory song began, the children would join in:
TV and some of Who's the leader of the band th at's the children: made fo r you and me?
A ll: M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.
The song was very much a group participation a c tiv ity . 160
As the Mouseketeers introduced themselves during the opening segment, the children began the "I-am-a-Mouseketeer" game. The four- and the five-year-old children appeared to be the most active p a rtic i pants in this exchange. The fiv e year olds and Donnie tended to be a little louder than the other four and three year olds during this verbal behavior. Some children announced they were going, wanted to go, or had been to Disneyland. Other children described what they saw on the screen, such as the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Marcie reported everyone turned into Mouseketeers.
The children frequently tried to anticipate what would happen next on the program. "I hope i t 's (the next segment) a cartoon" was the usual reaction. If there was a movie with animals and/or children, the movie would be more successful at attracting and maintaining the attention of the older children. If there was a talent segment, several children would be disappointed and start softly talking and do other things including changing seats. If the room was very crowded, however, the teacher usually instructed the child to sit down in his or her original seat. If the talent section had a magic act, the children were more likely to watch the screen, sometimes in wide-eyed amazement. Occasionally, a "Wow!" or "How did he do that?! would be heard.
The cartoon was what the children lived for in this program.
As soon as the scene with the cartoon title came on the screen along with the change in music, the children cheered, clapped, and shouted.
During the cartoon, however, the room was usually quiet. Most gross motor movements stopped, except perhaps fo r some three year olds who 161 continued to play with each other. One or two children might start sucking th e ir thumbs.
As soon as the program's farewell song began, two major kinds of activities began„ First, there was a fast, mass exodus to the play ground and big room. On rare occasions, the children raced, instead, to get in the line the teacher announced the children would have to form before leaving the room. Second, those who wanted to watch Star
Trek began asking permission to watch the program. This request was always granted. A few children participated in singing the closing song to Mickey Mouse. At the end of the song, Marcie said, "Mister
Mickey Mouse." Donnie announced, " It's time to go home."
Star Trek
Star Trek was the last television program of the day to attract several children. As with Sesame Street, however, most of this audience tended to be transient. A small number of loyal viewers watched the program almost every day. They were a ll boys.
Star Trek viewing began with several behaviors. Chanting the t i t l e of the program was one a c tiv ity Pete engaged in . Others began the game of "I-am-somebody-on-TV." The most frequent names called out were the names of "Captain Kirk" and "Spock." Other early verbal behavior included the children discussing their likes and dislikes of the characters.
As the program began, the children frequently engaged in dialogue identifying objects, asking questions and offering explanations about what was happening on the screen. One of the most interesting 162 behaviors to note a fte r the program's beginning was the children quick ly turning their interest to other activities, but continuing to "lis ten" for interesting scenes to watch, e.g., fights. Below is a sample of some dialogue that occurred during an opening scene of Star Trek.
Bobby: There's the Captain. Holly: Captain. (Pause) What's happening on there? Bobby: There's a lig h t f ir e . (Pause) There's the ship again. Holly: (Describing a flashing light) There's light, then dark, light, then dark. Bobby: I love Captain Kirk. Holly: That's a Star Trek hat. Bobby: They don't have Star Trek hats„ Holly: Hey, my shoe's falling apart. Bobby: I'm a Star Trek man. He's a Star Trek man. Holly: See that girl, I'm her!
Within this short dialogue, the children identified characters, objects, activities, their opinions of characters, offered corrective explanations, talked about non-TV related topics, and played the
"I-am-somebody-on-TV" game.
The la s t two programs also had commercials in them and the children developed sets o f behaviors around some of these commercials.
Commercials
The children were attracted to certain types of commercials in terms of products and in terms of other components of the commercial, e.g., animation, children, animals, music. Based on these attraction factors, the children listened to, participated in, and ignored various commercials. The children also developed sets of behaviors around the commercials that were frequently shown and that the children liked. 163
Specifically, the verbal activities or games of "I-have/want/ am-getting-one-of-those" and "I-am-going-or-have-been-some place" were among the more popular behaviors. Others included answering questions asked by the TV, repeating phrases or jingles during the commercial, making the "weird noise" they heard on the commercials,
and singing along with the music in commercials.
The games of watching te le v is io n , then, were program and commer cial specific. However, w ithin each of these games were other more basic games and themes, and these are discussed below.
The Game of Matching Television; An Analysis
This section of the report (1) analyzes the games and acts presented above in terms of general trends in the data, (2) compares television-based games in the viewing context to other forms of tra ditional play, (3) identifies the major functions and uses of this form of play by the children, and (4) identifies age, sex, and/or race related trends in these data.
What is important to note here is that some of the individual acts constitute games in and of themselves, so in this analysis what are being discussed in many instances are "games within games."
General Trends in Television-Viewing Play
The following discussion addresses the differences and s im ila ri tie s of the games in terms of (1) the programs, conmercials, and characters selected for this play, and (2) how these games were enacted during television viewing. 164
Programs, commercial, and character selection. In the day care center environment the three programs watched regularly included two children's programs and one adult action-adventure program. Since the children watched these by free choice, they must have found these programs to serve their needs and interests. On at least two or three occasions, the researcher helped the children look for other programs not normally viewed at the center that they might be interested in watching, and the children were unable to find any other programs at the times searched that they were w illin g to watch.
It appeared, then, in the day care center setting, the children preferred children's programs and action-adventure programs for viewing and for developing television-based play.
The characters the children selected in the verbal acts and games of "I-am-somebody-else" and "identification games" during television viewing were the characters on the screen and/or the characters the children anticipated seeing on the screen. During these observations for the "I am" games, the characters were almost always human (or at least part human in the case of "Spock" on Star Trek) and these charac ters possessed certain attributes which the children valued: power, strength, beauty, attractiveness, humor, talent, and physical features which the children perceived resembled th e ir own physical features.
The commercials the children developed games around were usually for certain kinds of products, most notably food, toys, and amusement parks, or the commercials that were the most successful at attracting and maintaining their attention. As might be expected, most of the commercials appeared to be sp ecifically geared for the children's 165
audience.
Structure and enactment of games during television viewing.
The programs that tended to invite the children's active participation were more lik e ly to have games developed around th e ir content and fo r mats. This was p a rtic u la rly the case in Sesame Street and Mickey
Mouse. Also, programs and program segments that were successful at attracting and maintaining the children's attention on the screen were also more likely to have predictable and patterned behavior develop around their content and formats, e.g., beginning of Star
Trek, Mickey Mouse, number and le tte r segments of Sesame S treet.
The regularly viewed programs had d iffe re n t size loyal audience members. The most loyal audience and the largest audience was for
Mickey Mouse. This program also commanded the largest viewing audience. Sesame Street and Star Trek had much smaller loyal audiences and these audiences were composed of to ta lly d iffe re n t children. In other words, a loyal Sesame Street viewer was not lik e ly to be a loyal Star Trek viewer. This lo y a lty was demonstrated in different ways.
A loyal Mickey Mouse viewer watched Mickey Mouse every day from beginning to end and did not play with board games or look at books while watching. A loyal Sesame Street viewer did not watch Sesame
Street every day during the observation period, but when he or she did watch he or she usually stayed in the room and watched the program from when i t was turned on to when i t went o ff. During this time the loyal Sesame Street viewer frequently engaged in other activities such 166
as playing with board games or looking at books, but continued to
listen for parts worth watching. A loyal Star Trek viewer watched
Star Trek almost every day, but usually only watched the f ir s t few
minutes of the program. This viewer le ft the room and occasionally
returned to see if the TV was s till on or if anyone was s till watching
and i f anyone was watching, i f anything "good" was on. While in the
room watching Star Trek this loyal viewer watched action and unusual
scenes and on the other scenes, talked, wrestled, and did other
thi ngs.
The programs also had transient audience members. Mickey Mouse
had the smallest transient audience (because most of the children
were loyal viewers) and Star Trek probably had the largest. Sesame
Street tended to attract several transient audience members near its
closing who were attempting to announce the arrival of "naptime."
An important situational variable that affected how the games
were structured and enacted was the presence and role of the teacher.
Mickey Mouse was the program that always had an adult present. The
teachers, on some occasions, ordered the children to alter the
behaviors and sometimes th e ir games depending on noise levels, dis
agreements, and other activities that tended to disrupt the situation
from the teacher's perspective. The other two programs tended to have
transient teachers, especially if the viewing audience was small and
reasonably well-behaved.
Finally, as illustrated in the previous section, the various
acts performed during television viewing varied from program to
program. Each program had its own cluster of acts that contributed to 167
its game of watching television.
In general, of the three programs, the viewing behaviors and
games developed around Mickey Mouse were more predictable, more
structured, than the viewing behaviors and games developed around
Sesame Street and Star Trek.
Television-Based Play and Talk and Other Forms of Play
The act of watching television, per se, has not been usually
id e n tifie d as a game. Gomberg (1961) id en tified a game called
"watching television" played by four-year-old children, but in this
case the children pretended they were watching television,, In the
present study the children were observed to play games or to enact
predictable sets of behaviors that were directly related to the
television content. These games were discovered to be composed of
several elements of more trad itio n al games and in some cases tied to
the children's speech development. Three of these play-speech
a c tiv itie s are discussed below.
The "Game of 5" and others. At least during one program the
children recognized themselves that they were playing a game. On
Sesame S treet, when the children watched and counted along during a presentation about the number 5, they described their behavior as
"playing 5!" During other segments on Sesame Street as well as during other programs and commercials, the children found plenty of oppor tunities to sing, chant, repeat verbal phrases, and make noises.
Because the content on which these behaviors was based was highly 168 predictable, the children were able to develop predictable games and ritu a ls .
These games were similar to the traditional singing and dialogue games described by Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg (1961), Sutton-Smith
(1972), and the acting games described by the Opies (1969).
The traditional singing games as played by young girls six to nine years old involved the players singing songs in unison along with accompanying movements. Frequently the children formed c irc le s ; the themes in their singing games dealt with activities that commonly occurred in a community including marriages; and some games had an
"It." The television version of this game also provided an opportunity for the children to sing together about a program or character they regularly came in contact with and the focus of their attention and
"group leader" in a sense became the television. Interesting to note, Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg (1961) reported that the traditional singing game had been losing its popularity with children. It might be suggested here that experiences with television may have contributed to further erosion of the singing games' popularity among young child ren in the 1960s and 1970s.
The trad itio n al dialogue games (which also had been losing popu larity) and acting games involved the children participating in games with set or already determined dialogue. These games usually had somewhat extensive story lines, and the children were obligated to follow the script. In the television viewing situation, the children participated in imitating dialogue they heard on television. They also learned that there were set times in the programs where they 169 could engage in certain verbal behaviors, and that the television script controlled the flow of the game. The television format or script, then, was somewhat comparable to the scripts of the acting and dialogue games.
Of course, there were important differences between this form of television-based play and the traditional games. The major differ ences were that during television-based play the children had less physical exercise and no real opportunity to alter the script in any kind of way. During television-view ing based games, the children were limited spatially to the location site of the television. This form of play was very "reactive" as the children just waited and reacted to what came on the screen. However, the children seemed to derive immense satisfaction from the predictability of these
"i nteracti ons/reacti ons."
The "Game of 111." Young children have frequently been described as egocentric in their orientation and this behavior has been reported to exist in their speech (Schacter, Kirshner, Klips, Fried- ricks, & Sanders, 1974) and in th e ir ta lk about television (see
Winick & Winick, 1979). To the extent that this talk was predictable and ritualistic in the television viewing context, this talk consti tuted games.
The "Game of 'I'" as identified in the television-viewing con text in this research involved the children saying something about themselves in relation to the television context. S p e c ific a lly , at least three variations of this game were identified: "I am," "I 170
have," and "I can."
"I am." The major activity in the game of "I am" involved the
children saying and pretending that they were somebody they saw on
television. As indicated above, this game was frequently played
during Mickey Mouse and during Star Trek.
"I am" was the most basic form of pretending, imitating, and
dramatic play. The television version tended not to be as involved or
led to. extensive plot development or socio-dramatic interaction with
other children. Instead, during the television-version the children
"claimed" an identity and then usually continued watching the program
with little or no further observable reference to the assumed identity.
When there was disagreement over roles, however, the discussion con
tinued until something distracted the children from their delibera
tions, e.g., a cartoon.
One important variation of the "I am" game was when the children
maintained their original identities and claimed they were in some way
"like" someone or something they saw on TV, e .g ., seeing the number 6
and saying "I'm six (years old)!"
"I have." During this game the children maintained their "real"
id e n titie s and announced that they possessed or owned something seen on television and that they had been or were going to places seen on
television. Technically, this game could be played describing the
child's relationship with television content and the past (e.g., "I
have"), the present (e.g., "I want"), and the future (e.g., "I will be g ettin g "). This game was frequently played during commercials for certain toys and amusement parks. In terms of the kind of speech, 171 within this game was a form of possessive language that has been described as reflective of certain stages in preschoolers' cognitive development (see Schacter e t a l . , 1974).
"I can." During this game the children also kept th e ir real identities and they announced or showed that they were capable of doing various things. One of the most popular activities was when the children attempted to "correctly" name and identify characters, ob jects, and programs that appeared on the television screen. At times, the children "raced" to see who could name something f i r s t , and whenever a child made a mistake, others would be sure to correct him or her. Another variation was a child stating that he or she could do something seen on television, e.g., riding a horse. S till another was when the child attempted to predict what was going to happen or said he or she knew or could te ll what was going to happen next. A fin a l variation was when the child did something that indicated she or he could express her or his feelings about television content. This
"expression" could be verbal such as "I lik e Steve Austin" or i t could be vocal such as "Yeah," "Wow," or laughing.
When several children engaged in these variations of the "games- o f-I," it could be argued they were playing a new variation of the game "follow the leader"; for frequently when one child (the leader) started the game, several others joined in as if to say, "me too!"
The "Game of Let's". The major characteristic of this game was that i t demonstrated the children's desire to in teract with others as they watched television. One variation was "let's-talk-about-what- 172 we-are-watching." Frequent question-asking and object-character- confirmation speech acts typified this game. This activity frequently occurred during the beginning of Star Trek. A second variation was the "let's-do-something-else-while-we-watch-TV" game. Depending on the program, the viewers, etc. the children would opt to play with board games (for which they frequently created and negotiated their own rules), wrestle, and jump on certain numbers during the discussion and songs on numbers during Sesame S tree t.
The major characteristic of the television-based games during television viewing was that they were almost to ta lly language-based with little required physical action. They resembled traditional forms o f play in terms of some very simple themes, e .g ., I am pre tending to be somebody else and follow the leader. Also, these language-based games were probably closely related to the stage of cognitive development in which a child was. F in a lly , i t might be argued that these games were an important new dimension in the evolu tion of children's play.
Uses and Functions of Television-Based Play in the Viewing Context
The children in this research were creative interactants with television and television content in group settings. Rather than viewing the children with "short attention spans," the children could be viewed as highly selective or "picky" viewers of television programs and of sequences within television programs. With the con tent that the children chose to watch, the children developed ways to use that content to meet their needs. Specifically, the children 173 developed ways to compare their perceptions of that content to the perceptions of others. They also developed ways to create and v e rify their knowledge about their physical worlds, about their social worlds, and about themselves.
These "developed ways" became in s titu tio n a lize d within the children's culture and manifested themselves in predictable, " ritu a l ized" patterns or games which developed around regularly viewed te le vision programs. The children selected programs that fulfilled their current needs and interests. Around those programs the children created and participated in a variety of acts or games that they repeated over time. These acts or games, in turn, helped the child ren more effectively use television to serve their needs.
For the children, three major needs were defining themselves in relation to their affective, objective, and social worlds. In the present research, the children were observed to use television and television-based play to accomplish these tasks. These a c tiv itie s are discussed below.
Understanding s e lf. Viewing games and behaviors helped the children learn more about th e ir a ffective worlds and what kinds of pleasures, fears, and excitement they could derive from the tele vision experience. Viewing games and behaviors also helped the children identify and develop various skills which they needed to function in their social worlds. These skills are discussed in more d etail below. 174
Understanding self in relation to the objective world. The
children used television to learn about their objective worlds. They
acquired information from watching television and they used television
to test their skills at recognizing and correctly identifying objects
(and people) in that world. The identification and question-asking
ritu a ls and games discussed above e ffe c tiv e ly provided a mechanism fo r
the children to accomplish these goals. During the course of this
observation, the children were very pleased with themselves when they
were able to correctly identify an object. Because this activity was
more popular with the children under six years old, the source of
verification tended to be older children (although a five-year-old
child could correct information for a four-year-old child), the
teachers, and the television.
Closely related to naming objects was the activity of requesting
or stating that one owned or was getting an object. As with the
above behaviors, these acts were incorporated into games, and these
acts served to identify for the children their position in the world
of consumer goods. In fa c t, the enthusiasm some children expended in
this game might suggest that being able to participate in th is game made them feel that their statements increased their status in that
system and hence th e ir self-esteem.
Finally, the children's relationship to controlling television
viewing and predicting what happens on television programs also con
tributed to the children's view of themselves. This became apparent
when the children were observed to derive pleasure from the games that
aided them in stating what was going to happen next (or their 175 knowledge of that fa c t) and reporting they could watch TV whenever they wanted to.
Understanding se lf in rela tio n to the social world. The children used television to learn about their social worlds and to establish relationships within their social worlds at the day care center and in th e ir homes.
At the day care center, the game of watching television afforded the children the opportunity of being with each other and adults or it fu lfilled a communal function (see Foley, 1968, and McCain, 1972).
Being involved in the various acts during television-based games, especially those in which they did things with others (e.g., chanting), and interacted with others (e .g ., asking and answering questions), contributed to the children's need to feel included and a part of the group. In general, the children demonstrated this inclusion need by searching for ways to be included in the play of others on the play ground and in other areas. In the backroom play of watching tele vision, the children could be included in the group play simply by joining in the chanting and other verbally based television games.
Being included in the group play could also be linked to feeling a part or perhaps even a more significant part of the social system. It may have also contributed to the children's perception of being liked by others in that system.
I t should be noted that there were probably developmental d iffe r ences in the children's inclusion needs. It appeared that the need to be included in others' play began by the time a child was three 176 years old and it increased as the child got older. Within those developmental differences were also personality and perhaps cultural differences, e.g., one child needed to be more included than another.
Watching television with others and how one participated in the television-based games also contributed to and maintained or changed the position the children held within the social hierarchy of the children's culture. The child who was a proficient game player or at least an aggressive game player was able to create or maintain a position of power, e.g., "I'm Spock, you have to be Scotty." Some children willingly assumed the less powerful roles just to be included, to be liked, and to have a closer link to the older or more powerful children.
Watching television also provided some children with the oppor tunity to withdraw from others and to avoid doing or participating in certain activities. This use was not necessarily tied to any of the television-based group games described above.
In addition to establishing relationships with people in their immediate social systems, the children could also establish para- social relationships with the characters and people they saw on television. Some children reported the people they saw on TV were their friends and that they talked to their friends. These children then fe lt at least some of the people on TV liked them (friends).
Finally, the children could compare their perceptions and opinions with each other in various acts about the ways the people on
TV handled interpersonal relationships, e.g., asking why a character ran away from home. 177
In summary, the children developed games and acts around regularly viewed programs which allowed them to more e ffe c tiv e ly utilize television and television content to serve their current needs and interests.
Developmental, Sex, and Race Trends in Viewing May
Developmental differences in the use and participation of these acts and games were suggested. S p e c ific a lly , the younger subjects participated more heavily in acts that contributed to their defini tion of self, e.g., verbal announcements about self in relation to
TV content and TV viewing. They also asked more questions about television content than did the older children, and the three-year-old children in particular found television served fewer of their current needs and frequently turned to other activities during television viewing ( cf., short attention span).
Participation with the television and involvement with tele vision "games" during televiewing appeared to be most dominant among and peaked with the four- and five-year-old children. The four- and five-year-old boys, in particular, were the loudest and the most verbally and nonverbally active during television viewing.
By the time the children reached six and seven years old, their participation in the television viewing games decreased, particularly in those games of identifying objects and characters on the screen and probably the verbal acts of announcing their relationship to the content on television. 178
Sex differences were much less apparent. The boys were "louder" and more verbally and nonverbally active than the girls were. During the "I-am-somebody-else" game, the girls selected female characters and the boys selected male characters. In one program viewed at the center, there was a lack of regularly appearing female lead charac ters. During this program, i t was interesting to note the g irls claimed they were the female guest star, e.g., "I'm her." In terms of handling space, the g irls were clearly more lik e ly to s it with teachers than were the boys.
Race differences were also apparent during the "I-am-somebody- else" game. Two Black male four-year-old children frequently selected
Black characters "to be" during this game when Black characters were available. Sometimes the White children also noted that the Black children should be the Black characters.
In this context, for both the female children and the minority children, the lack of choice in characters and the secondary and sup portive roles to White males female and minority characters frequently portrayed probably was a grave disservice. This was the case especially if the children were in fact utilizing television content to help define their self-concepts. This research as well as previous research supports the contention that children do use television con tent in their development of self-concepts (also see Noble, 1975).
In summary, the sixty plus behaviors the children enacted during
TV viewing were found to have regular patterns of use during regu la rly viewed programs. In this study th is patterned behavior was labeled the "game of watching television." 179 Furthermore, a closer analysis of the data revealed that within the game of watching television, there were several basic themes or basic games which were id e n tifie d as the "games of '5 '" and others, "games of ' I ' , " and "games of le t's ." These three games as well as the "game of watching television" appeared to have been iden tified for the first time by the present research.
Finally, the research findings suggested there were developmental, sex, and possible race differences and trends in terms of how the children participated in these viewing games. CHAPTER VI
RESULTS IV: TELEVISION-BASED PLAY AND TALK
IN THE NON-VIEWING CONTEXT
The data in this chapter described the children's delayed uses of television as exhibited through th e ir play and ta lk . Throughout this discussion specific similarities were drawn to the work of three research teams and individuals: the Opies (1969), Sutton-Smith (1972) and Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg (1961) whose work was done on school- age children six years old and above and the Singers (J. Singer, 1973,
1977; with D. Singer, 1976, 1977, 1978, plus works with Tower et a l.,
1977; and Caldeira, n .d .), whose work was done with children two to five years old.
I t should be noted that the Opies and Sutton-Smith works have relevance to this study because both suggested that preschool children played some of the games their older contemporaries played, but the younger children would play those games d iffe re n tly and more idiosyncratically. This present research attempted to look for regu larities in that "idiosyncratic" play.
At the same time data were being collected in the present study, the Singers' research team was also collecting data and looking for regularities in the preschooler's play and how those regularities related to the children's uses of television. Specifi c a lly , the Singer team's concern was on television 's relationship to
180 181 make-believe play and imagination.
The present research ultimately focused on (1) cataloguing and describing the preschooler's television-based play and talk in a way similar to what the Opies and Sutton-Smith did for the play of school-age children, (2) analyzing how the children selected and enacted the television-based materials observed in th e ir play in varying contexts, (3) analyzing how the television-based games com pared to more traditional forms of play, and (4) analyzing the uses and functions television-based play served in the children's culture.
Television-Based Talk
It was frequently difficult to separate the preschoolers' play from their talk, because so much of it was closely intertwined. For example, the children used television-based talk to help construct their television-based games. When a child said he or she was a par tic u la r TV character, and then went on to ta lk about some seemingly unrelated TV-based topic, the question arose of how to categorize that behavior. Was that talk a part of the play or separate television based talk? The researcher decided much of what she heard as te le - vision-talk at first was really a form of television play, e.g., "I- am-somebody-else-talk" was a form of play even when it was not accom panied by complex story plots. In general it was found that most children talked about the TV programs they played, and as the children got older they talked more about those programs.
The actual non-television viewing verbal behaviors were similar to the during-television viewing verbal behavior, e.g., the children 182 attempting to describe what they had seen on television and asking questions about vhat they had seen or what was going to happen next- time. The children talked about all forms of programming including news stories about children and commercials. Most of these topics of ta lk were addressed in Chapter V. There were a few other verbal behaviors in the non-viewing context, however, that need to be re addressed due to th e ir novelty, th e ir s lig h tly d iffere n t use, or th e ir dominant presence in this context.
Game Negotiations
In one sense, the act of negotiating what game would be played and who could play what character was a game its e lf . These observa tions suggested that some children were more successful than others at starting games and that some children were frequently denied admit tance to games. Some excluded children devised creative ways to avoid overt attempts to join a game (e.g., Can I play?) and instead focused the players' attention on what the excluded children could bring to the game. For example, to get in a game of "Star Trek" one day, Robbie's successful tactic was, "Look at the gun I got!" On days when Robbie was unsuccessful in gaining admittance to a group, he was on the verge of tears for several minutes.
One of the most frequent disagreements among players was over who got to be what character. In "Star Trek" the choice roles were
"Captain Kirk" and "Spock." The other roles such as "Doctor" and
"Scotty" were not liked as well. Sometimes this game never got started with the original negotiators because "no one would give in." 183 Instead, on some occasions, two games started because other children
came who did not mind assuming the less powerful roles.
Riddles, Songs, Phrases
The children learned the language and songs of television and
sometimes incorporated i t into th e ir daily communicative interactions.
They also knew riddles and songs about the TV programs and characters
they watched. A six-year-old g irl one day shared the following song:
Jingle Shells, Jingle Shells Robin laid an egg Batmobile lost his wheel And Joker got away, Hey. (sung to the tune of "Jingle B ells")
The children also repeated phrases from programs and commercials as they moved through th e ir commercial worlds. Robbie one day kept repeating, "Have a Pepsi Day!" Charlie decided a new name that the researcher would have one day was "Miss Afro-Sheen." When asked where he learned the name of that Black hair care product, he answered Soul Train, a Black music and dance program. A three-year- old girl at the center was affectionately called "Terri-Mac-Attack"
(taken from the McDonald's Big Mac commercials) because her la s t name sounded similar to "mac-attack."
Ownership of Television Paraphernalia
One o f the most obvious roles television had in the lives of these children three to six years old, particularly with the four- and five-year-old children, was providing characters to adorn their
T -s h irts , th e ir shoes and sandals, th e ir lunch boxes, th e ir towels, their play and real watches, and other paraphernalia including toys. The children at the center were walking testimonies and advertise
ments of the popularity of clothes and other properties with media
images for kids, and, to be sure, the children talked about these
items, especially when the items were new. Most frequently their
comments were simply to draw the attention of others to what they had.
I t appeared that within the children's culture ownership and wearing
certain media-based products was the "in-thing" to do and may have
afforded one some modicum of status in that system.
Television-Based Games
As if to bring this entire phenomenon full circle, the children
talked about the television-based games they played. Several parents
reported that their children told them about the games they played "at
nursery." Kay told her mother she was "Bat G irl" and Chip was "Robin" when they played Batman at the center. Alan told his mother about what he did when he was "Tarzan." Donnie also shared with his mother his TV-based game adventures.
Television-based games and talk were closely related—perhaps too closely related to talk about a meaningful separation. For example, each of the major categories of talk described above could also be described as a "game." The Opies (1969) suggested that
"starting a game" can be a game or sport in and of it s e lf . Accord ingly, a TV-based negotiation game could be identified, as well as games such as "I-Know-and-Can-Say/Sing-a-Riddle, Song, or Phrase about-TV-Based-'Stuff and "I-Have-and-Can-Show-You-My-TV-Based-
' S tu ff'." Because of the strong sim ilarities between television play and talk, the rest of the discussion in this chapter will focus on tele- vision-based games.
Television-Based Games: A Description
The children spent much of their free time playing games. Care ful observation of this play revealed that for many of the children
"television-based materials" constituted an important part of their play. In this study television-based materials included (1) the identities, behaviors, speech patterns, and symbols associated with fictional characters and real life personalities who appeared on tele v is io n , (2) themes, plo ts, and presentation formats from te le vision dramatic and comedy programs, news and talk shows, variety programs, television movies, commercials, cartoons and non-cartoon children's programming, and (3) other forms of information whose source could be verifie d as, in part or in toto, television. The children's culture at the day care center in this study had over fifteen television games that were identified based on television m aterials. While a ll the children under study and the teachers at the day care center could describe these games, it quickly became apparent during the observations that there were several variations to some games which were frequently related to the age and sex of the participants and to where the play occurred. In the discussion below, the ten most popular games are described. A few others are briefly addressed. Since the games were usually identified by program titles (or variations on program title s ), the games are 186 presented in a like manner in alphabetical order. The first game discussed will be treated in the most detail.
Batman
"Batman" was the most popular game at the center during the course of this research. A ll of the primary subjects played "Batman" according to their self-reports, parent reports, and/or teacher reports. This game was played inside and outside, and differences in the game were noted based on who was playing and where the game was being played.
Age. Children as young as three years old were observed to play
"Batman." Three-year-old Marcie's version of the game included singing the melody to the song "Batman" while running and waving her arms as i f she was fly in g . When two four-year-old boys played "Bat man," each had to have "capes." According to Mitch, "You need a cape, a bat car, and a 'Batgirl'." Of course, Mitch was sure to specify that "B atgirl's" cape was yellow and "Batman's" cape was blue. According to Alan, i f you did not have a real cape, an apron would do. A third four-year-old boy emphasized the need for a bat- boat and lots of movement! S p ecifically Donnie said to play "Batman"
"You run and run as fa s t as you can and drive the bat boat." The younger children, then, emphasized running and the possession of cer tain props. They also frequently played alone.
Bat capes were also a necessity for the five- and six-year-old children. Five-year-old Jill said to play ". . . you get a bat cape and bat shoes and put on 'Robin' s tu ff." When J ill played "Batman" 187 she was "Robin" and an older boy was "Batman." Five-year-old Holly also reported that a cape was a necessity and she reported that when she played "Batman,""I be 'Batgirl'." Five-year-old Billy's explana tion of the game added the dimension "the good guys . . . ju s t get the bad guys." Six-year-old Melissa reinforced this theme. "Somebody has to be 'Batman,' somebody has to be 'Robin,' somebody has to be
'B a tg irl,' somebody has to be bad guy . . . bad guys do bad things, rob gold, get stuff!" She also indicated that certain children played certain specific roles, but did not identify herself in one of those roles.
In comparison to the younger children, the older children emphasized specific child-character role identifications where the younger children did not. The older players also played with more participants and added more complexity to their game strategies.
Sex. The g irls played both male and female roles in "Batman."
When the g irls played with boys, and in this study the boys were usually older than the girls, the girls played the less powerful figures, e.g., "Robin," "Batgirl," "Batmite," instead of the more powerful roles of "Batman" or the "Joker." The three-year-old girls and the six-year-old g irls were much less lik e ly to be observed or reported by the teachers to play "Batman" at the center. All parents except six-year-old Melissa's mother reported their children played the game at home.
For this game, girls were likely to identify certain children including themselves in p articu lar roles. The older g irls never 188
id en tified th e ir roles as that of "Batman."
The boys played male roles. Frequently at the onset of this
game the boys engaged in "negotiations" over who would be "Batman."
The older, stronger, more aggressive boys were usually the "winners"
of these disagreements. The younger boys, lik e the g ir ls , opted for
the less powerful roles when playing with the older boys, played
alone, or played with a group of younger boys where they could control
the powerful roles. There was one exception to the boys playing male
roles. Four-year-old Mitch actually appeared to prefer female roles
to male roles in all play situations. The boys, by far, were the most
frequent players of the game "Batman" according to field observations
and teacher reports.
One important difference between the boys and the girls was that
the boys emphasized the need fo r action vehicles in the game both in
their actual play and their descriptions of the play. None of the g irls discussed nor used on a regular basis the infamous "bat car"
and "bat boats,11 alias big wheels.
Game site. On the whole, the children did not make many distinc
tions in their explanations between how a game was played inside
versus how a game was played outside. Observations and teacher
reports both revealed differences. Parent descriptions, when com
pared to the observational data and teacher reports, revealed that there were also differences between home play and day care center play. 189
When the children played inside at the day care center, everyone had capes. I t was important for the children to dress the part. The game was played more inside than it was outside and this in part may have been due to the fact that at the center, play clothes were not allowed to be taken outside.
Inside, the game involved more climbing and less running. The children used an indoor jungle-gym structure as the bat cave, a ja il or whatever they needed for the game. Frequently, the children had to jump or " fly o ff" the jungle gym to accomplish the tasks of th e ir play. The basic plan of the game involved getting the capes and assuming roles, chasing the bad guys whether real or imaginary, cap turing the bad guys, letting them escape, and repeating the cycle.
Another variation involved the characters running out to save people or running out to do something as a team such as "put some body's house back together" and then return to the bat cave and wait for a new problem.
Outside, the game involved more running and less talking. The big wheels and scooters were added to the "real" props while the capes were dropped. "Batman" and "Robin" on the playground were more male-dominated. The basic plan of the game, e.g., chasing bad guys and solving problems, remained the same in both contexts.
The game of "Batman," then, was played somewhat d iffe re n tly depending on the p articip an t's age, sex, and where the game was played.
Interesting to note, the game plan of "Batman" was very similar to the game plan of other TV-based games, especially those games based on superheroes. 190
Bionic Man and Bionic Woman
These games were based on the television programs The Six M illio n
Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. The children frequently combined the characters from the two programs into one game. I t should be noted that the "Bionic Man" and the "Bionic Woman" did appear on several episodes of each program together.
All the children reported they played the game and all the teachers reported having seen each primary subject play and talk about th is game, except fo r Melissa who only had been observed to talk about the game. Similarly, all the parents except for Marcie's and Holly's reported their children played this game at home.
While all the children reportedly played this game at one time or another, during the course of this research i t appeared to be more popular with the younger children. The major a c tiv itie s the younger children associated with this game were running and jumping. Four- year-old Kay pretended that when she was the "Bionic Woman," she was running away from monsters. She was probably referring to the creature "Big Foot" that had appeared in some episodes of one or both of these programs. Donnie and Chip both emphasized running very fast and Alan and Mitch emphasized jumping,, When Alan and Mitch jumped, they also made a noise which sounded similar to the sound effect that was played when the characters on TV jumped. When Mike played the game, at home, he also threw things around lik e he saw done on the program.
The older children had seemed to "outgrow" this game as i t was played by the younger children. They were seldom observed playing 191
this game at the center. However, parent reports revealed this was
not the case in the older children's homes.
The older girls and one five-year-old boy were reported to use
dolls in their play at home. Specifically, Jill would jump off
chairs and rescue her dolls, while Melissa lined up her dolls and let
them know she was the boss. Bobby also played with his Bionic do lls.
At home all the older children jumped when they played the game.
Running seemed to be slightly less important. In fact, six-year-old
Chuckie did things in "slow motion" im itating a production technique
used in the programs. When Melissa played with neighborhood kids, she
identified specific children with specific roles.
At the center both inside and outside this game was characterized
by physical a c tiv ity and sound effects more than plot development.
This may have been one reason why the game appeared to be less
appealing to the older children. Frequently a child played this game
along or with one other person. There were two variations of this
game which made’ more roles available. The f ir s t variation was where
there were three, four or more bionic men or women. Everybody who
played had the same identity and usually everybody did the same thing
—ran and jumped. No specific plot was developed. The second varia
tion was called "Bionic House." In this game, all the traditional family members and a "k itty " were bionic. Being bionic meant each character, in addition to "super" running and jumping powers, also had bionic eyes and ears!
This game was played more inside than outside and the general plot was based on a comparison of bionics. G irls were female 192 characters and pets, e.g., Holly was the "bionic kitty," and boys were male characters.
Captain Marvel and Isis
These games were also based on two separate but related te le vision programs, Captain Marvel and Is is , and as with the game above, the children frequently combined the characters from the two programs into one game. A ll the children reported or were observed to play these games.
The major physical activities associated with "Captain Marvel" were fly in g and picking up and moving heavy objects, and these were the activities the boys imitated. When four-year-old Chip played the game he was f ir s t a normal person, then he spotted trouble and then he had to get strong. He got strong by saying "Shazaan!" which turned him into "Captain Marvel." Chip played the game with his father. Alan played the game with a cape, and reported that his
"Captain Marvel" saved kids that got hurt.
The major physical activities associated with "Isis" were pulling out a necklace and then turning around in a circle- The girls imi tated these behaviors, although mostly to be "Isis" one pretended to be strong, and a fte r having turned around, ju s t ran. Having a cape was important for Holly, and for J ill having the full costume was better.
During the observation period, only the younger children were observed to play th is game with any reg u la rity . The teachers agreed that this game was most popular with the four-year-old children. When an identifiable plot was associated with this game, it was the 193 trad itio n al good guys versus bad guys theme. "Captain Marvel" and
"Isis" frequently teamed together to fight the real or imaginary bad guys!
The starting point of this game was when the normal children turned into "Captain Marvel" and " Is is ." The game was observed more outside than inside, and the children most frequently played the game alone, a g irl being "Isis" or a boy being "Captain Marvel0"
Donnie and Marie
This game was based on the m usical-variety program of the same name. All the primary subjects reported or were observed to play this game, although several of the boys' parents reported their sons did not play the game at home.
The major activity associated with this game was singing. This was the case for all the children regardless of age or sex. The major prop fo r this game was something that could be used as a micro phone. At home three-year-old Marcie used an ear syringe!
Another important a c tiv ity that crossed age and sex was acting silly! If a "stage" was available, one got on the stage and sang and danced. At the day care center this game was most frequently played inside where children had access to a large wooden chest and a picnic table which served as a stage. Popular with the g irls and younger boys, this game also included the "performers" dressing up in the play clothes. At least for the girls, it did not seem to matter if they were "Donnie" or i f they were "Marie." This game was the least popular with the older boys. 194
The children emphasized to play the game you needed a "Donnie" and you needed a "Marie." The older children associated specific children with specific roles. The teachers noted that the children really liked to play the game when they thought the teachers were not looking!
Emergency
"Emergency" or "Ramparts" as the children sometimes called i t was based on the program of the same t i t l e and was very popular with four- and five-year-old boys. Only two children were not observed to play this game. One was four-year-old Mitch who generally preferred female roles.
The basic theme of this game for all ages involved the children pretending to be firemen and helping hurt and injured people. Props which included real or pretend fire hats, walkie-talkies, fire trucks, and medical devices were important fo r a ll ages. The major sound effect was that of the ambulance siren which the four-year-old children frequently mimicked. The aspect of the game that seemed to amaze the parents and teachers the most was how well and accurately the children used the medical terminology they learned from the show.
Inside and outside variations of this game occurred at the center. These variations were based, in part, on the children's ac cess to physical objects and structures. Inside the "firemen" dragged th e ir victims around. Outside, the victims were not dragged. Inside, the children used a large structure to represent or be the ambulance and they used some toys fo r gas masks. They did not have access to 195
these objects outside, but they did have a "fire pole" which they could slide dowfi. During the course of this investigation, "Emer gency" was almost always played inside and g irls and older boys very seldom played.
Mickey Mouse
"Mickey Mouse" was not generally recognized as a traditional game played in this culture. While several parents and teachers reported the children talked about "Mickey Mouse," no teachers and only one parent reported that the children "played" "Mickey Mouse."
Children, on the other hand, did identify some activities as playing
"Mickey Mouse" which the parents and teachers also reported but labeled as "talk." These were the activities of pretending to be a mouseketeer, and singing the Mickey Mouse songs. One parent reported a game played at home where her five-year-old son and some neighbor hood children put on th e ir "Mickey Mouse" hats and pretended they were the Mickey Mouse Club. A fter claiming specific id e n titie s , e .g .,
Bobby became "Todd," the children sang songs from Mickey Mouse. At the day care center, on a few occasions in the non-viewing context a group of children pretended to be mouseketeers, but usually no furth er a c tiv ity occurred unless i t was close to the time Mickey Mouse came on the air. In this case, the children frequently started singing or "humming" the song or talking about watching the program.
Starsk.y and Hutch
This was a game based on the popular series about undercover policemen. While this program was a very popular topic of talk it was 196 not played that often except, once again, by the four-year-old boys.
When two g irls played the game, they sometimes became the g irlfrie n d s of the lead characters.
The basic theme of this game was good guys versus bad guys.
"Starsky" and "Hutch" would see the bad guys, chase the bad guys, and eith er shoot the bad guys or catch them and put them in j a i l . There were some variations of this game. One variation allowed for the increasing of roles by having several "Starsky's" and several "Hutch's" who chased bad guys. A second variation focused on the "chase scene." The big wheels were a necessary prop here for the wild and
"crashing" scenes. This was Donnie's fa vo rite . A th ird variation was ju s t running and jumping and saying you were doing what "Starsky" and "Hutch" were doing. A fourth variation was saying you were either "Starsky" or "Hutch" and assuming the identity all day during all activities. A fifth variation was saying and pretending to be
"Starsky" because one of the more popular teachers gave you more attention when you informed her who you were! These variations were enacted mostly by the four- and five-year-old boys.
Star Trek
Star Trek was a popular TV program with the older boys and i t was in their play where this game was most frequently observed. Some of the four-year-old boys also were becoming regular players of the game. Girls almost never played the game. The one exception was
Holly who liked to play with Bobby. On at least one occasion Bobby invited Holly to play the game with him, but on another occasion when 197 he had boys to play w ith, Bobby did not want Holly to play.
Interestingly enough, one of the major activities associated with this game was the negotiation session where the boys argued over who was going to be "Captain Kirk" and who was going to be "Spock."
Once the game got underway, the theme was the basic good guys versus bad guys. The bad guys were often imaginary spacemen, robots, and monsters, and what do you do to spacemen, robots, and monsters— shoot them with the ray guns! The ray guns were important props fo r this game. Inside the boys used guns made from bristol blocks. They also had bristol block walkie-talkies. Other activities during this game included providing the sound effects for the guns and walkie-talkies and pretending to disappear when being "beamed up or down" or trans ported to another location. Inside the boys developed plots with more details, whereas outside, the plots had less detail and more physical a c tiv ity .
Bobby best described the basic plot of this game, "Do what they do on TV—get the bad guys and go back in the space ship."
Tarzan
Tarzan was a game of the four-year-old boys. Older boys were also observed to play this game on occasion, but the g irls were not observed to do so. This game was very much a s o lita ry game in that a player usually played by himself. The activities associated with this game included the "Tarzan" y e ll, beating one's chest, running, and swinging ori a rope. One of the interesting variations of this game was when the "Tarzan" called a teacher to watch him do an amazing 198 feat! Inside this game involved more climbing. Outside it involved more running and walking around—in addition to the swinging.
Wonder Woman
"Wonder Woman" was a game that was most popular with the four- and five-year-old girls. The boys played the game, too, with the additional role of "Wonder Man."
To play "Wonder Woman," the child had to turn around in a c irc le and wear a cape. Some very special props needed for th is game were the "Wonder Woman" bracelets. These were conveniently provided each day at the end of juice time when several children punched out the bottoms of their dixie cups and slipped the cups on their wrists.
Another important prop was the truth string "Wonder Woman" carried.
Four-year-old Katie said "Wonder Woman" had electric power in the string.
The basic format of this game was beating up the bad guys and saving the good guys from the bad guys. There were variations of this game. One variation was o f the "Wonder Woman"-"Wonder Man" combina tion mentioned above. The second was the three or four "Wonder
Women" in one game format. A third variation occurring inside was when the g irls dressed up in long gowns and then turned into "Wonder
Woman." A fourth variation was when the g irls combined "Wonder Woman" and house. A f if t h variatio n , and the one most frequently observed during this research, was of a single girl or Mitch twirling around with a cape on, saying "Wonder Woman" and running. The la s t varia tion was when g irls cut out pictures of "Wonder Woman" from comic 199 books and pretended th e ir "Wonder Women" were involved in various activities, c.f., doll play.
Other Games
In addition to the games described above, there were others that were observed and that the children reported. One game that the parents, teachers, and children talked about that was never observed during the course of this research was playing "Fonzie." According to the descriptions of this game from the children and parents, the game involved the child saying "I'm Fonzie" and/or turning one's thumbs up and saying "aye" or saying "S it on i t . " The children were not reported to develop plots around this character.
Another game that was primarily movie-based, but which the children also learned about from television , was "King Kong." While not normally described as a game by parents or teachers, the children were observed to have at least one version of this game which was very similar to their game of monster. In the game of "King Kong," the creature became the object of a shoot-out. The child who played
"King Kong" was one who was not necessarily w ell-integrated into any groups at the center, and being "King Kong" was one way he got the attention of others. To play "King Kong" at least two children believed "King Kong" had to have a g ir l. Two others believed he had to be on buildings. The children talked alot about "King Kong," but they were not observed to play this game often.
A third game was based on Charlie's Angels. The older girls
(six and older) had been reported to play a game at one time called 200
"Charlie's Angels," but this version was not observed during this study. However, a version of the game played by the four-year-old boys was observed. Basically, this was a jumping game where the boys jumped o ff a box and as they reached the flo o r they said the name of one of "Charlie's Angels."
S t ill other TV-based games were reported or observed in part that were played at the center included "S.W.A.T.," "Adam-12," "Spiderman,"
"Superman," and "Superfriends." This la s t game had in i t several superheroes including "Batman" and "Robin." On at least one occasion the "Lone Ranger" was played. One very unusual game occurred a fte r a tornado warning had been issued for the Columbus area the night before. That following morning several young children, four year olds, were playing with pretend radios. They explained that the TV and their parents said listen to the radio about tornadoes. Chip was chanting "tornadoes b ite you, k ill you, blow you." For several minutes Chip and Pete then ran around the room shooting and k illin g tornadoes.
One la s t point about the TV games the children were observed and reported to play. At the day care center, the children did not select non-human characters fo r th e ir play models, with the possible excep tion of "King Kong" as played by one child. In the parent reports about home play and some of the child reports, some non-human play models were identified including "Big Bird," the "Pink Panther," and
"Bugs Bunny." I t appears, then, that non-human TV play models were not a significant part of the children's culture at the day care center, but they may have been more important in the home environment. 201
Television-Based Games: An Analysis
Television was a popular source of play materials fo r the children at the day care center. During the course of this research, a ll of the primary subjects were observed to play and ta lk about
television in the non-viewing context. In their television-based play
behavior, several definite trends were noted, and in most instances those trends were supportive and/or expansions of previous research
in children's use of television and in children's play in general.
Two areas in particular, the ages and sex of the players, were strong ly related to different trends in these data.
When compared to more trad itio n al forms of play, non-viewing TV play was found to have several s im ila ritie s both in terms of dominant themes as well as in the uses and functions it provided for the children.
These areas of concern are addressed below.
General Trends in Television-Based Play
Television-based play was analyzed in terms of how the children selected programs and characters for their play; how they enacted and portrayed the television characters and themes they selected; and what was the impact of available paraphernalia and different con texts on this play. Both the data from this study and relevant research are presented in the following discussion.
Program and character selection. The children were observed and reported to use information from over twenty different television programs in th e ir play. The characters and themes extracted from 202 these television-based games had some sim ilarities.
Pg ■. The children selected superhuman, high-action, and powerful TV characters more than any other kinds of characters for use in their television-based play.
The most popular characters by far for the children at the day care center were superhuman characters such as "Batman," "Robin," and
"Wonder Woman." R ealistic (non-superhuman), high-action characters were also popular and included "Starsky" and "Hutch," "Tarzan," and
"Captain Kirk" (Star Trek).
Similar findings were reported by Singer (1977) and Epstein and
Bolzer (1976). Based on data collected close to the same time the data in the present research were collected, Singer reported that in the play of three- and four-year-old children, "Batman," "Superman,"
"Bionic Man and Woman," and "Wonder Woman" were commonly used. He suggested that "(t)lie pull of the powerful figure is a strong one for even from Sesame Street our children are more likely to adopt the
'Cookie Monster' as a make-believe character than some of the more benign muppets on the show" (Singer, 1977, p. 13). Epstein and Bolzer
(1976) also reported that the "Bionic Man," "Batman," and the "Bionic
Woman" were popular TV characters used in the children's play.
One possible explanation for the attraction to and use of these powerful characters by preschool children in th e ir play was offered by Winick and Winick (1979). They suggested that because children, especially those four to six years old, have a "tremendous need to test one's independence, strength, and levels of mastery in order to ve rify powers," play based on the superpeople ("Batman") provides the children with a way to meet those needs" (p. 136). 203
Interesting to note that the program theme that most of these powerful characters were involved with was the "good guys versus bad guys theme." Pulanski (1973) also noted in the play of young boys, fighting themes were the most common fantasies.
P The children selected TV play models who were "funny" ancj " s illy " and who sang and danced.
The children also selected characters for their play that the children perceived to be silly, funny, and talented. The children liked "Marie" and "Donnie Osmond" because these "personalities" were funny and they did something the children liked to do and could easily imitate—sing on a stage and act silly. "Fonzie" was attrac tive because he, too, was funny and he also did things they could easily im itate—say "S it on it" and f lip up the thumbs and say "Aye."
Epstein and Bolzer (1976) reported that "Fonzie" was a popular
TV character used in preschool children's play in the mid-seventies.
Winick and Winick (1979) suggested that humor was important to young children because it helped them cope with their anxieties and feel powerful. If the Winicks were correct, then acting out the roles of characters they perceived to be humorous served useful functions for the children. Interesting to note, both the "Osmonds" and "Fonzie" got to do things that sometimes the children were not allowed to do.
When the children used these characters in their play, they may have found ways for their parents and teachers to let the children "get away" with doing things the children might not have ordinarily been allowed to do. This may in fact explain why the children liked to play "Donnie" and "Marie" when the adults were not looking perhaps in 204 an attempt to avoid possible censorship of their play activities.
P6. 3 The TV characters who the children were most likely to select for their play were physically attractive and had (1) costumes or props, (2) distinguishing and easy-to- im itate nonverbal behaviors, and/or (3) distinguishing and easy-to-imitate verbal behaviors.
Several other factors affected the selection of TV characters by the children for their play. Some children reported they liked the characters they "played" because the characters were attractive. A six-year-old g irl explained she liked "Wonder Woman" because the character was pretty. This same little girl went on to report that she also liked "Wonder Woman" because of a specific nonverbal action
—running. Five-year-old J ill liked to play "Wonder Woman" because she liked putting on the costume. J i l l f e lt more lik e the person or more authentic when she could wear some form of costume. In fa c t, she reported she did not play some games other children her age played because she did not have the costumes.
Another popular set of characters were the "firemen" on the program Ramparts, better known to adults as Emergency. The children liked these characters because the characters had distinguishing dress
(e.g., fire hats), distinguishing props (e.g., fire hoses, stetho scopes), distinguishing actions (e.g., rescuing people), and dis tinguishing verbal behavior (e.g., Squad 51, pulse, heart attack, ambulance, e tc .).
Physical attractiveness has also been found to be related to children's preferences for characters in television viewing, although much of this research is based on older, non-preschool children (see
Reeves, 1979). While props and costumes have been reported important 205
for some kinds of play, the claim that children are particularly
attracted to characters with props and/or easy-to-imitate behaviors
is a somewhat d iffe re n t and extended interpretation of previous
reports, and is based on comments from the children and observations
in the present study.
Finally, in terms of character selection for their play, the
children selected both animated and non-animated characters and
they selected both human and non-human characters. While most of
the characters observed in this study and reported in other studies
were non-animated, the children did not exclude cartoon characters
from the pool of characters they pretended to be. For example, in
many of th e ir superhero games, the children selected characters which
they prim arily knew through Saturday morning cartoons. The animated
and cartoon characters in the children's play were humans, muppets,
monsters, and animals. However, human models in th e ir television
based play were, by far, the most popular. The teachers noted that
at the day care center, the children never pretended to be the muppets
from Sesame Street or "Mickey Mouse" or any other non-human characters
that the children appeared to enjoy watching on TV on a regular basis.
The children's and parents' report indicated a slightly different
picture. While human characters were s till dominant, muppets (e.g.,
the "Cookie Monster"), and cartoon animals were sometimes used as play models at home. Singer (1977) and Epstein and Bolzer (1976) also
reported that the "Cookie Monster" was u tiliz e d in the children's television-based play. They did not report the presence of cartoon animals in the children's repertoire of TV-based characters. 206
The "good guys versus bad guys" theme was popular in the
children's play. There were at least two other observations about
the children's selection of play themes.
Pfi-4 children were more lik e ly to select TV-based play models and themes from programs that were s t il l on the a ir .
The television-based games reported in this research and in the
Singer (1977) and Epstein and Bolzer (1976) studies were games based on the current television program offerings. The day care center
teachers reported that over the course of the year, when a program
that was frequently used in the children's play went off the air, the frequency with which that game was played also began to diminish.
The Opies (1969) also suggested the existence of a sim ilar
phenomenon. When describing the "war" game variatio n , "Cowboys and
Indians," they suggested that this game variation was labeled according to the popular television programs of the day.
The second observation about the children's selection of play themes and characters was that the children were likely to select themes and assume the character iden tificatio ns suggested by adults, a t least in the presence of the adults. For example, one of the more popular teachers with the four- and five-year-old children was known to be a strong fan of Starsky and Hutch. Consequently, in her
presence several children were reported to assume the id e n titie s of those characters both when the teacher requested they do so and when she did not request that behavior. In another situation, this same teacher suggested the children create new roles during the game of
"Bionic Man and Bionic Woman" so more children could play and the 207 c o n flic t over roles would be reduced. The children responded by creating roles such as the "Bionic Brother," "Bionic Sister," and the
"Bionic Kitty."
Other researchers have also noted the role adults have and can have in children's play (M illar, 1974; Smilansky, 1968) and in television-based play specifically (Singer, 1973, 1977). In fact, these researchers and others have recommended adult involvement to varying degrees in television-based play and other forms of pretending play to help develop and stimulate children's imaginations, creativity, and the joy they receive from play. At least one parent reported that the children and parents in her family played pretending games together (also see Singer & Singer, 1977).
Several factors, then, appeared to be related to the children's selection of television-based characters and themes in their play.
These included (1) powerful characters, (2) funny characters, (3) a t tractive and easy-to-imitate characters, (4) themes and characters currently on the a ir , and (5) themes and characters suggested by adults.
Enactment and portrayal of TV characters and themes: develop mental and sex differences. Based on the children's ages and sex, they played and participated in television-based play in different ways. In the present study, all the children between the ages of three and a h alf and seven years old were observed to use television - based materials in their play. Other studies have suggested that television-based play appears in the play of children as young as two 208 years old (McCall, Parke, & Kavanaugh, 1976). Generally, the use of
television-based play in dramatic play had appeared during the third year of life or by the time a child was four years old in this study and in concurrent research (Singer & Singer, 1978).
P The use of television-based materials in play appeared 6-5 to peak with the four- and five-year-old children.
According to fie ld notes, teacher reports, and children reports, the children between the ages of four and five years old were the most regular users of television-based materials in th e ir play. Not only did the four and five year olds play TV games more often, they also selected from a wider range of possible characters. More sp ecifically, this age group of children selected characters for their play that older children seemed to "outgrow." The six- and seven-year-old children, instead of playing as many TV games began playing games that had more structured rules, e.g., kickball, and they began talking more about the programs they watched. This is not to suggest that the seven-year-old children completely discarded television-based pretending games. The small number of seven year olds at the center continued to play these games, but did so much less frequently than did the younger children.
Almost identical findings were reported by Smilansky (1968) when she suirmarized the current thinking in child psychology about develop mental trends in socio-dramatic (group-oriented pretend play).
The theorists (Bllhler, Valentine, Isaacs, and Piaget) commonly mention the age of three years and old er, and agree that at about the age of six this form of play tends to become less frequent, until at seven, games-with-rules are the common feature and socio-dramatic play tends to disappear, (p. 11) 209
Not only was the frequency of use of TV materials in play affected by age, but also how the TV material was used was related to age.
P6-6 As the children became older, their use of television- based materials in play included (1) playing with increasing numbers of children, (2) developing more complicated plots, (3) playing games of longer duration, and (4) making more sex-related distinctions in their play.
Age appeared to be strongly related to how the children played television-based games. One observation, very much in line with research on children's social play, was that as the children got older they tended to participate in play groups of larger sizes
(see M illar, 1974; Parten, 1933; Rubin et al., 1976). While playing alone or solitary play was more typical of the children three years old and younger, by the time the children reached four years old they frequently engaged in many kinds of television-based and fantasy- based group play (see Hurlock, 1934; Rubin, Maioni, & Hornuug, 1976).
A second observation, which was also very much in line with research on children's social play and developmental uses of play was as the children became older, they used television-based play in more complicated ways.
The three-year-old children and some four-year-old children had the least complex formats. Specifically, the children simply pre tended they were television characters such as "Tarzan" or the
"Bionic Man," and then they ran, jumped, climbed and did whatever they wanted to. Frequently, they played alone. This play best demonstrated what could be labeled "television-based (dramatic) 210
solitary play."
A next form of play and a next level of play involved two (or
more) children selecting the same TV character identification (e.g.,
three "Wonder Women") or selecting different character identifications
(e.g., "Starsky" and "Hutch") and then running around together, not
necessarily developing a real plot or story line to their play.
This play demonstrated what could be labeled "television-based
parallel/associative play."
A third form of play was when the children started developing
and negotiating story lines to their television-based play. Play
themes such as "good guys versus bad guys" appeared in the play and
the children jointly developed more complex plots and play episodes.
This last level of play could be labeled "television-based associa tive/cooperative play." Other researchers of children's play in general have also reported the increasing complexity of children's play as it relates to the children's ages (Millar, 1974; Singer, 1973).
Also related to the age of children was the relative length or duration of the play episodes. The older children tended to have
longer episodes, while the younger children had shorter play episodes.
The younger children (three- and four-year-old children) were also more likely to have games with indefinite beginnings and ends. For example, a game of "Batman" might "blend" into a game of "Captain
Marvel" which then blended into a game o f "Superfriends." Singer
(1973) also found that in the make-believe play of three and four year olds, there were relatively few elaborated sequences and few games that had clear beginnings and endings. 211
F in a lly , there were other age-related differences observed in
television-based play. Some sex differences were apparent in the play of the children as young as four and five years old. Millar
(1974) reported sex differences in the play of children as young as three years old. More of the sex differences are discussed below.
Some data in the present study suggested that younger children (three- and four-year-old children) combined the attributes of different TV characters together, more than did the older children. For example, the four-year-old version of a superhero, e.g., "Superman" could sometimes do anything the child wanted the character to—regardless of what special s k ill that superhero might be lim ited to in the media portrayal. The six-year-old player, on the other hand, was more likely to stick to the skills or attributes defined by the media and more likely to attempt to correct others who strayed from the media presentation of s k ills . This is not to suggest that older children never combined these attributes. One simple explanation of why the children of three and four combined these attributes was that their cognitive s k ills were not developed to the extent that they could keep all the attributes separated. However, an equally plausible explana tion was that the children were situation-oriented and they needed a set of skills to overcome the present obstacles, and it was reasonable to them to add skills to their media character or change characters altogether. M illa r (1974) suggested that some deviations and combina tions in the play of the young may be recognized by the young and done deliberately. 212
As suggested above, there were also important differences in how the children used TV-based materials based on sex.
Pg-7 ^he boys played more TV games and used more TV in th e ir play than did the g irls .
The boys four years old and older used more TV based materials in their observed play than did the girls of the same ages. In fact, the highest users and players of TV games were the four- and five- year-old boys. The teachers suggested that some of the four-year-old boys,such as Donnie, Bobby, and Alan, played every single TV game that was identified within the children's culture. Gomberg (1961) reported that boys were also the more frequent players of TV-based games.
Similar sex differences were reported when the children played pretend games in general play. Singer (1973) reported that in free play situations, the boys two to five years old showed significantly more make-believe. Rubin et al. (1976) reported that for children three and four years old, the girls engaged in significantly less dramatic play.
Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg (1961) note that in terms of changing trends, while older girls have incorporated more traditionally male games in th e ir play, g irls have not been concerned to id e n tify them selves with fantasy roles which are important to males. Boys follow fantasy roles, while girls follow more realistic roles. These findings might suggest that maybe g irls "innately" are less attracted to pretend play and hence most forms of television-based play in the non-viewing setting as described in this research. Child psychologists 213 who have noted this difference are not necessarily in agreement about the reasons for these differences, and some psychologists such as
M illa r (1974) would argue that culture and environment have to have a significant impact on these differences. Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg
(1961) o ffe r cu ltu ra l/s itu atio n a l reasons why g irls do not id e n tify as much with fantasy roles (p. 266).
When the boys engaged in television-based play, they were observed to play in larger groups and use more physical actions, such as running, jumping, than the girls did. These same observations were reported for other forms of pretend and make-believe play (M illar,
1974; Rubin et a l . , 1976; Singer, 1973). Rubin suggested boys formed larger groups and were involved in more physical actions, while Singer reported boys had a higher level of motor activity, and M illar reported boys were more boisterous and energetic. Once again, the causes for these differences are open for discussion, but social training and environment are key factors. In the present research, i t should be noted that there were a small number of g irls who also demonstrated high levels of motor activities during their play. These same girls also appeared to have higher attractions to television-based play than did some of the older girls their ages.
Pg q The g irls were more lik e ly to play both male and female TV-based roles, whereas the boys tended to play ju s t male TV-based roles.
One exception to this proposition was four-year-old Mitch who seemed to prefer female roles to male roles.
Others who have looked at television-based play reported similar findings. Caldeira et al. (n.d.) reported girls used both male and 214 female superheroes in th e ir play, while the boys used c h iefly male superheroes (also see Singer, 1977). Epstein and Bolzer (1976) reported that males always played TV males, and g irls played female
TV characters just a little over half of the time. One very obvious reason fo r females playing male roles was that the females had so few
TV-based characters who were ideal for use in television-based play from which to choose. A second reason was th at, in general, the children had already learned that it was more socially acceptable for g irls to adopt boys' play than vice versa.
Sex and age, then, were strongly related to how the children played television-based games.
Impact of Available Paraphernalia and Context on Pfay
The environments in which the children played affected what games they selected to play and how they decided to play the games they did select.
Pg-g The availability of certain physical objects to the children encouraged certain forms of play.
When the children had access to objects which reminded them of objects used by certain television characters and those characters were attractive as possible TV play models, the children were more lik e ly to pretend to be those characters. For example, during this study, when the researcher attempted to collect samples of the children's ta lk by using "inconspicuous" microphones, the children delighted in the opportunity to take the "real" microphones and sing.
Donnie in p articu lar became “Donnie" of "Donnie and Marie." The 215 presence of other objects such as aprons, big wheels, etc. also affected how certain games were played. Pulanski (1973) reported that in general play some play themes were inspired by the availa bility of play materials.
A different form of television-based play occurred when the children had access to TV character dolls, pictures of TV characters in books, and drawing materials or clay. The children here developed stories about what th e ir TV characters were doing as the child dressed the TV character doll, cut out a picture of that character from a comic book, or "created" something related to that character.
In another form of play, the children talked about TV characters in conjunction with another activity they were doing, e.g., jumping off chairs.
Oftentimes closely related to the availability of certain physical objects was where the play occurred. At the day care center, the impact of location became apparent when i t was noted by both the teachers and the researcher that for some games the children had indoor and outdoor versions, and that some games were usually played outside and other games were usually played inside. In particular, the teachers noted that inside play tended to have more strongly developed plots, while outside play had more running and less overall development of complicated plots.
In summary, television-based games were recognizable forms of play at the day care center, and there were identifiable factors which affected the children's selection of these games, enactment and portrayal of these games, and the variations of the games they played. 216
Television Based Games and Other Forms of Play
While television games were an important part of the children's day, these games were by no means the only games they played. However, this study focused only on the TV-based games. One of the most striking features of several of the children's television-based games was the strong good guys versus bad guys theme. The question was then asked what was the relationship of television-based games to the good guys versus bad guys theme, and what i f any other basic themes are evident.
Then the next question posed was how do these themes relate to more traditional children's games.
Good guys versus bad guys. "Good Guys versus Bad Guys" is one of the basic and traditional children's pretending games in Anglo-
American culture. The game requires that one set of children assume the identities of good guys. The good guys in the day care center play had two basic tasks--fight the bad guys and help good people.
The logical intersection between this traditional game and television-based games is that the children have taken away from their experience with television a reality about the struggle between good and bad. Furthermore, the children see this good and this bad personified in the characters on the television programs they watch.
It is convenient and probably quite meaningful to the children that they are able to borrow and become the characters they associate with being good and powerful. Then, children instead of playing good guys versus bad guys in its purest form take information from television and improvise on that traditional theme. 217
At the center, good guy versus bad guy themes appeared in games
such as "Batman and Robin," "Captain Marvel and Is is ," "Starsky and
Hutch," and "Wonder Woman." The major differences among these games
were the special characteristics associated with the TV characters
upon whom the game was b u ilt. In the examples above, a ll the charac
ters have superhuman powers except the mortals "Starsky" and "Hutch."
Interesting to note, the superhuman good guys were the most popular
good guys. In addition to having the appropriate superpower charac
teristic, e.g., flying, the good guys generally (1) had to have the
same enemies, e .g ., "Batman" and "Robin" had the "Joker" and "Starsky" and "Hutch" had robbers, and (2) had to have the same sphere of com
patriots, e.g., "Batman" and "Captain Marvel" might have occasion to work together, but not "Batman" and "Starsky."
In this game, television provided the children with some creative alternatives, but at the same time these alternatives had
built in restrictions. In one sense, then, television expanded the children's play opportunities, and in another sense it may have also
lim ited those opportunities.
Doctor/hospital. The traditional game of the doctor and the nurse helping sick people also had a modern day translation on te le vision. In the more trad ition al game the doctor and a nurse helped a sick man who was probably at home, in a doctor's office or in a hospital. The children brought th e ir translation of this game from
Emergency. In this game the basic theme was helping. The TV program added extra drama and spice to that helping by adding danger 218 and exploring elements. The format of this game also required three people, but instead of the doctor and nurse now the characters became two firemen with walkie-talkies so the firemen could talk to the doctor and nurse. What the firemen had to do was help the injured patient or patients. Sometimes the firemen would have to fight fires and climb down mountains to save th e ir patients—much more exciting than ju s t standing by the patient's bed and taking his or her temper ature and listening to the heartbeat because, yes, the firemen got to do that too. Because the firemen were in emergency situations they had good reasons to take extraordinary actions to save l if e lik e a r t if ic ia l respiration and sending e le c tric shocks through the body.
Finally, the firemen got to ride in ambulances and fire trucks that made "neat" sounds. The game of doctor had d e fin ite ly met its match with this group.
House and fam ily. "House and Family" are probably the most popular games among very young children. Previous research tends to support this assertion (Hurlock, 1971). At the day care center this was an inside game that was popular with the three- and some four- year-old children. This game enjoyed a wider appeal among the older children when it, too, was combined with a television game. At least three TV variations of this game were observed and/or reported. The most popular variation of th is game was "Bionic House." Here the traditional family members and family pets all became bionic. Dolls and imaginary family members were added as desired. Once the family was established, the family could do a number of activities which 219 were, incidentally, related to the objects in the house playing area. For example, the family could f ix dinner, go to the store, go on a trip, or become involved in any other family related activity.
Bionics "spiced-up" the game.
A second variation of the game was called "Brady Bunch House."
Here the players assumed the identities of the characters on the program by that name. A th ird variation was "Wonder Woman House."
In this variation all the players were "Wonder Women."
11 Anythinq-you-can-do-I-can-do-(better)!11 While not necessarily thought of as a traditional game, this was the major theme underlying several activities the children engaged in, particularly the younger children. The activity in this game involved one child doing some thing and another child repeating what the f ir s t did. Running, jumping, climbing, riding the big wheels were typical activities.
The major variation of this theme was to not only repeat what the first child did, but repeat it in a superior manner, e.g., run faster and jump higher—the breeding grounds of competitive behavior. The television game variations of this game came from programs such as
The Six Mi 11ion Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, Tarzan, and Starsky and Hutch. Superhuman characters also could be modeled fo r this game.
Television suggested to the children several different varia tions on how to play this game to the extent that certain characters might be more p roficient in certain kinds of acts. The trad itio n al game version of the above actions was "Follow the Leader." 220
111 am !11 This was the most basic form of dramatic play—pretending to be someone'else during so lita ry play. At the day care center, this game was almost always television based, e .g ., the children pretended they were someone they had seen on television.
The only rule to play this game was a simple declaration to self and maybe those around you, "I am this person!" There were some varia tions of this game.
One was "Look at me, I am . . 11 Here the child wanted others to see him or her and perhaps what the child was doing. The usual pattern of events here was that the child called out to the person or people whose attention he or she wanted, announced his or her new identity, and then engaged in some physical activity.
A second variation was "Now that I am______, I can do any thing!" This game served a useful function for children who wanted to do something but were afraid or hesitant about going ahead with that something. For example, a child who was afraid to confront someone who he thought was a bully, was able to do so when he pre tended he was a superhero. As stated before, this was almost exclusively a television-based game.
Singing and entertaining games. These games involved the children pretending to be entertainers and singers. Here the child ren sang songs, danced, told jokes, and had the opportunity to per form for and in front of their peers—for fun! As with the pre ceding game, almost all of the singers and entertainers the children pretended to be were people the children had seen on television. 221
The most popular singers during this research were "Donnie" and
"Marie." The teachers reported other popular entertainers had been
"Sonny" and "Cher" and the "Jackson 5." These games appeared to be modern variations or translations of the traditional singing and dialogue games (see Sutton-Smith, 1972).
It seems, then, that in the culture of the children, television- based games (1) almost completely replaced some traditional games in name, while maintaining the same basic theme, e .g ., good guys versus bad guys, and (2) they provided lively, "spiced-up" versions of other games such as "House," and (3) in some games television provided almost all the names the children used to fill-in-the-blank or identify with as they did other things.
Other themes. With the major themes described above, there were other a c tiv itie s and themes combined. For example, "Chasing,"
"Running," "Catching," and "... Bases" were popular games the children played and these themes were incorporated into their TV- based play (see Opies, 1969, and Sutton-Smith & Rosenberg, 1961, for descriptions of trad itio n al games). For example, in the game of
"Batman" and other "Good Guys versus Bad Guys" games, the children who were the good guys frequently chased bad guys, caught bad guys, and returned the bad guys to the good guys' bases, ja ils , and bat caves. In the young children's chasing games which involved TV and media monsters such as "Big Foot" and "King Kong," the children ran from the "monster" as the monster chased them a ll over the play ground. The object of the game was not to get caught by the monster. 222
Included in this game were also the activities of screaming and laughing.
Individual TV-based games, then, incorporated several themes and traditional play activities. Consequently, in the culture of the children, television-based games were inextricably woven into the children's overall play. Other aspects of the relationship of television-based play to play-in-general are addressed in Chapter VII.
Uses and Functions of Television-Based Play in the Non-Viewing Context
The children used television-based play in much the same way they used non-television-based play; therefore the consequences or functions served by these two forms of play were very similar. In the following discussion three major kinds of uses and functions are ad dressed: (1) understanding self, (2) understanding self in relation to the objective world, and (3) understanding self in relation to the social world.
Understanding s e lf. As suggested by M illa r (1974) one function of play for children was to increase excitement in their lives. Also it added "fun" to their lives. The children in the present study indicated that they frequently preferred television-based play to other forms of play. The reasons offered for this preference in cluded that the television-based play was "better" and "more funner."
Television-based play, then, helped the children understand what they enjoyed and what th e ir feelings were. 223
Another important function television-based play served for some children was helping them build up their confidences. Four-year-old
Robbie was able to control the playground "bully" because he had assumed the identity of a superhero. Four-year-old Alan was able to accomplish physical feats because he was "Tarzan."
Understanding self in relation to the objective world. Millar
(1974) suggests that play provides several d iffe re n t functions fo r children. Several of the functions she describes are descriptive of the functions of television-based play. These and other functions are addressed below.
One use or function of television-based play is that it helps the children understand puzzling events that they see on television.
Millar described this same function for the children understanding other events occurring in their life worlds. In these instances the children "played" about the events that confused them and sought additional interpretations from those around them. Similarly, another function of television-based play was to seek confirmation of a hazy memory of something viewed on televisio n . Once again, playing about that which was in doubt or hard to recall provided an opportunity fo r the children to "think through" and work out details and seek addi tional interpretations from th e ir peers and from adults. Some vivid examples of how children dealt with unclear phenomena were offered by the Opies (1969) when they described reports of children playing
"assassination" following Kennedy's assassination in 1963. While
Kennedy's assassination was a media event fo r many, another example 224
which was not was when the children of Auschwitz played "going to
the gas chamber." At the day care center, the news reports of the
tornado in the area resulted in the children playing a game about the
tornado. "King Kong" was puzzling to some children and they talked
about him and "played" "King Kong."
Closely related to providing ways to deal with unclear phenomena
learned about on televisio n , television-based play also helped the children deal with the frightening things they learned about or saw reinforced on television. In the tornado game reported above the children attacked and killed tornadoes. This play probably allowed them to make the tornadoes less threatening in their minds and served a function comparable to when adults "talk about" things that upset them. Games about "monsters" seen on television were other ways the children used television-based play to lessen their fears related to television-based materials. Millar suggests that play in general can help children reduce fears.
Another function television-based play provided for children was to serve as a creative stimulus in their play. The children sometimes took traditional play themes and added television-based content to those themes. In other instances, the children combined television content from d iffe re n t programs into one game. Some current thinking in cognitive development suggested that the children combined these elements from d iffe re n t programs because they were unable to follow and use materials from ju s t one program in an accurate manner. M illa r cautioned against that interpretation for all deviations from a game in children's play. Instead she suggested that some children 225
knowingly a lte r events in th e ir play to make those events pleasing to
themselves in a fantasy. I t can be suggested here that i f those
alterations were based upon television content, television was a
source of that c re a tiv ity .
An interesting observation at the day care center had to do with
how the teachers described the "creative and imaginative" children at
the day care center. Almost all the children who fell in these categories were the ones who played several television-based games.
At least, overtly then, the more creative children were associated with playing several television-based games.
Television-based play not only served as a source of im itative play, but i t also served as a source of creative play and in general helped the children understand th e ir relationship with the objective world.
Understanding s e lf in relatio n to the social world. Television- based play provided a commonality among the children. Just as TV provided adults, both strangers and friends, with something to talk about, TV also provided children, both strangers and friends, with something to play. For those children who understood what the TV games were about, they could join in and perhaps more easily partici pate in those games (see Noble, 1975). Depending on the age groups and sexes involved and other factors, the games could, of course, be enacted in a number of different ways.
Once involved in the television-based play, the children had an opportunity to "try out" or test certain social skills in play with 226 th e ir peers. For example, they could test whether real or pretend
"aggressive" or "pro-social" tactics were more effective in their- pretend situations. An interesting observation in this research that was also reported in some of the play observed by Smilansky (1968) was that during the make-believe play (which included television-based play in this study), the children were not physically aggressive towards each other. In other words, the aggression in th e ir play, when i t occurred, was also pretend or make-believe. Smilansky notes this absence of real aggression in dramatic play is not universal for a ll cultural and socioeconomic groups.
When im itating behaviors observed on television in th e ir play, the children, as with other imitated behaviors, were learning and testing those behaviors for inclusion in their developing repertoire of social skills (see M illar, 1974 and Sutton-Smith, 1972). The children also used television-based play to control and establish their positions within the social hierarchy of the children's culture.
During television-based games, those children who successfully played the roles o f the powerful people in group play were usually success ful in getting those roles in future play. These same children often had considerable influence in determining who could play in group games. This p a rtic u la rly appeared to be the case in the play of the children five years old and older.
Two uses of television-based play by the high-power children in this social system appeared to reinforce the sex-age status-power i system described in Chapter III. The first use was to exclude girls and low-power persons from the play. The high-power children's reasons for the exclusions, in part, were based on th e ir interp reta tions of the requirements of the television scripts. For example, in the game of "Star Trek," the boys argued that the g irls could not play because there were no g irls on the program. At least on one occasion, a five-year-old girl reminded the boys that there was a lady on the program. The boys retorted she was not in the game they were playing. The boys' claim could be interpreted to mean that the female character, in this case "Lt. Uhuru," was not an important character in the program, and hence expendable in th e ir play. From the boys' perspective, the script was a reason for excluding the g irls .
A second use of television-based play that reinforced the status- power system was that during group play, television-based play served to lock the g irls and low-power persons into lim ited roles and into roles that were less powerful than those that the boys selected. For example, during the game of "Batman" the boys assumed the powerful roles of "Batman" and the "Joker" while the girls assumed the less powerful roles of "Batmite," "B a tg irl," and sometimes "Robin." During the game of "Starsky and Hutch," the g irls sometimes assumed the secondary roles of "Starsky" and "Hutch's" girlfriends. The girls also had few female role models from which to choose who were involved in team work in a dramatic series. The one possible exception here was the program Charlie's Angels. Ironically, the women in this program were "supervised" by two men, so i f the g irls did choose this as a favo rite game, the boys could have s t il l assumed the most power ful positions in this program/game. During the course of this 228 research, the g irls were not observed to play this game. The argu ment that girls are less interested in group play could possibly account for their apparent disinterest in this television-based game; however, because there were five-year-old g irls interested in joining the all-m ale group play, that argument would need further evaluation.
An obvious and disturbing consequence of commercial television 's sexist portrayal of women (U.S. Civil Rights Commission, 1977, 1979) is that these portrayals have filtered down into the children's group television-based play activities.
A final use and consequence of television-based play in relation to the child 's social world was that i t helped the children learn what kinds of pleasure, fun, frustration, and pain they could derive from group play.
In summary, the children in the non-viewing contexts talked about television and played television-based games. Topics of television-based talk included (1) game negotiations, (2) riddles, songs, jingles, and phrases, (3) television-based paraphernalia, e.g., clothes with TV characters on them, and (4) television-based games that the children had played.
The children were observed and reported to play over fifte e n television-based games which were called and identified by the name of television programs and characters. The children had several variations of most of these games which were based in part on the age and sex of the players and where the games were played. 229
The analysis of these games revealed that there were identifi able characteristics that made certain characters and programs attrac tive to the children for use in their play. Age and sex were found to be related to the frequency that television-based play actually occurred and to the actual television-based roles the children assumed.
The analysis further revealed that non-viewing games were pri marily variations of more traditional children's play. Games such as "Good Guys versus Bad Guys," "Doctor," "House and Family," "Follow the Leader," "I am______," singing and entertainment games,
"Running," "Chasing," etc. were the major themes in most of the children's non-viewing play.
Non-viewing play was found to be very functional for the child ren, much in the same way that play in general has been found to be.
The major use identified in the present study was that television- based play helped the children learn more about themselves in re la tion to th e ir affective (fe e lin g s ), objective, and social worlds.,
Non-viewing play was found to be dysfunctional fo r the children when the children adopted television scripts with negative stereo types of women and minorities and rigidly applied those scripts to their play. CHAPTER V II
DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS,
RETROSPECT, AND CONCLUSION
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to explore and identify the d if ferent ways day care center children used television and television- based materials in their daily lives. In this investigation, every attempt was made to view particular television-based phenomena from the children's perspective in two general contexts: while watching television and elsewhere.
The results suggested that the children developed "games" around television content in both of these settings. Previous research had only reported the kinds of games that have been associated with the non-viewing games described in this report. In addition to identi fying and reporting the phenomenon of viewing play, these results did the following more clearly and/or in more detail than had been done in previous research:
— identified, described, and analyzed different themes and variations of young children's television-based play
— identified the relationship between viewing and non-viewing play
— identified the kinds of programs children selected for their television play
230 231
— identified character and character attributes attractive to preschool children fo r use in th e ir television play
— identified relationships between television play and the children's perceptions about television's reality
— id en tified over sixty verbal and nonverbal acts children engaged in while watching television
— id en tified the factors preschool children consider when deciding what's real and what's pretend on television
— identified differences between parent and children responses to questions about the children's favorite TV programs and characters.
F in a lly , this report demonstrated that the television games the children developed helped them use television more e ffe c tiv e ly to serve th e ir needs including the need fo r communicative interactions.
The following discussion summarizes viewing and non-viewing play and their relationships to (1) each other and traditional forms of children's play, (2) the social context, (3) the children's consump tion and preferences for television programs and characters, (4) the children's perceptions about televisio n , (5) developmental and sex trends, and (6)' the multi-method approach to studying children and their television uses.
Television-Based Play
This study as well as others, most notably Gomberg (1961) and the
Singers research (1973, 1977, 1978), has clearly demonstrated that children "play" about the things they see on TV. Within the two kinds of contextually-based television play identified in this study, several different forms of television-based play actions are identi fied. These include: TV-Based Motor Play. This play allows the child to engage
in gross motor actions such as running and jumping, and
generally to gain mastery of his or her motor s k ills . In
this form of play the child asserts he or she is running
lik e the Bionic Woman, or demonstrates that Steve Austin does
this. A large percentage of this play might be classified
as imitative.
TV-Based Manipulative-Constructive Play. The child engaging
in this form of play builds, digs, or otherwise creates and manipulates something that he or she associates with tele
vision. The child may build a "house" from blocks and an
nounce that Charlie's Angels live there or the child may mold from d ir t and weeds as a hide-out fo r King Kong.
TV-Based Language Play. This is play where the child talks to the TV and others about TV content and repeats verbal phrases, songs, and vocal expressions heard on TV. This play helps the children gain mastery of language s k ills .
TV-Based Dramatic Play. This play involves the child pre tending that he or she is someone else, that one object or nothing represents or becomes something else, that the child is in a d iffe re n t time or space, and that a series of actions needed fo r the accomplishment of the play have already happened. This play may help lay the foundations for crea tivity and abstract thought.
TV-Based Social Play. The child engaging in th is form of play involves others in his or her play activities. The 233
nature of these social interactions have been previously
related to the child's age. Younger children are more
likely to engage in solitary play and then move to play in
dyads. Generally, as the child gets older the size of his or
her play groups increases. Also, with age, the complexity of
play increases. Finally, as the child gets older the kinds
of interactions change from the child merely playing in the
company of other children to all the children doing the same
thing to the children co-jointly negotiating play activities.
This play helps the child develop his or her social skills.
These fiv e forms of play actions appeared in both viewing and non-viewing play; however, some forms were more frequently used in non-viewing play (e .g ., motor play) and some forms were more frequent ly used in^viewing play (e.g., language play). Also, many play epi sodes of the children utilized three or more of these play forms. The kinds of play that occurred in the two different settings are addressed next.
The firs t kind identified was television-based play in non viewing settings or non-viewing play. This play included alot of dramatic, social, and motor play, and the names of the specific games were the names of television programs or television characters.
Several general themes ran through many of these television games including "Good Guys versus Bad Guys," "Doctor or Hospital," "House and Family," and "Anything-You-Can-Do-I-Can-Do-(Betterl)."
The second kind of play identified was play that occurred during actual television viewing or viewing play. This play included alot of 234 dramatic, social, and language actions, and unlike non-viewing play, viewing play was not necessarily labeled as play by the children. The major exceptions were the letter and number activities the children participated in during Sesame Street, e.g., "Playing '5'." Other forms of play in this context included the "Games of 'I'," the "Games of 'Let's'," and negotiation games.
In the discussion below the contextually-based television forms of play, viewing and non-viewing play, are compared to several vari ables which are related to how the children selected material for this play, how this play related to other forms of play, and how this play served the needs of the children.
Program and character selection. The programs the children selected for viewing and non-viewing play were not necessarily the same. In viewing play the children's activities were usually tied to the program or commercial that was currently on the screen or one which was expected to come on soon. In non-viewing play the children's a c tiv itie s were prim arily based on television programs that were currently on the air. These programs included prime-time as well as afternoon syndicated programs.
Non-viewing play was also related to the television-based props to which the children had access. These props included actual replicas of symbols and objects used in the television programs, and they included objects which were used to represent symbols and ob je c ts , e .g ., an apron used fo r a cape or a play gym pole used as a fireman's pole. 235 Unlike viewing play, non-viewing play rarely was based on commer cials, and unlike non-viewing play, viewing play was rarely observed to be related to props in the setting. However, in the present research "props" were rarely available in the viewing context. Of course the children had a wider selection of programs to u tiliz e in non-viewing play than they had in viewing play.
The characters the children selected for viewing play were the characters that were currently on the screen or characters the children anticipated seeing. In non-viewing play the children selected from a much broader range of characters currently appearing on the television weekly schedule. But in both forms of play, the characters selected were very similar in terms of certain attributes including power, strength, action, attractiveness, humor, and musical talent. In viewing play, the children also selected children characters and adult characters that the children perceived to look like them. In non viewing play, the children selected characters who had easy-to-imitate verbal and nonverbal behaviors, and the children were lik e ly to u tiliz e adult suggestions for program and character selections for the play.
The children had a wider selection of characters in non-viewing play, but those characters they selected were more often high-action characters. In viewing play at the day care center, high action characters when on the screen were preferred to non-high action characters.
Structure and enactment of games. The major differences in the structure and enactment of viewing and non-viewing play included the 236 identities the children chose during those games and their interactions with adults during those games. The s im ila ritie s between the two were largely a function of the age and sex of the players.
During viewing play, the children usually maintained th e ir original identities except during the games of "I-Am-Somebody-Else," while during non-viewing play, the children frequently assumed the identity of a television character. The kinds of characters the children selected for their non-viewing play appeared to have conse quences or be related to the structure of that play. For example, high-action character-based play tended to have more creative, dramatic play episodes, whereas comedy-and-music character-based play tended to be more straight im itation and involve fewer dramatic sequences. One similarity between the two forms of play was that the children who regularly played specific games tended to assume the same id e n tity or ro le(s) when they enacted those games.
When adults were present in the viewing play situations, the adults tended to have the most control over the interactions especially i f those interactions became loud or disorderly from the ad u lt's per spective. In the non-viewing situations, the children involved in dramatic group play sometimes deliberately avoided contact with adults and played in areas where adults seldom ventured. This activity reflected the children's need to have control over their own situations and be separate from the adult world. They avoided adults, then, to maintain their private world of play.
There were several developmental s im ila ritie s between the two forms of television play. In both cases, television play appeared to 237 peak with four and five year old children. As the children became older, they devoted longer periods of time to the programs they were watching and to the accompanying games in the viewing context. In the non-viewing context, the children devoted longer periods of time to the particular television games they were playing. In the viewing context, "transient viewing" was more typical of the three year old children as a dominant viewing style, than it was as a style for older viewers.
The games played in both contexts also became more complex with age. In the viewing situation, children increased the different kinds of verbal acts they utilized in play, e.g., starting with "I games"
(e .g ., Have I been there before?) and la te r adding verbal acts that were other-oriented and action-oriented (e.g., Why did that man go in there?). In the non-viewing context, the games started being developed around more complicated plots, more d iffe re n t roles were added to the play, and more negotiations sometimes occurred for those roles.
Finally, the number of people the children interacted with also ap peared to increase for both kinds of play as the children got older.
Sex-related differences were noted in both forms of play. In the viewing play the children almost always assumed the same-sex character roles. In some cases the children began associating some programs fo r
"g irls" (e .g ., soap operas) and some programs for "boys" (e .g ., cowboy shows). In the non-viewing play, the boys almost always assumed male
TV character roles, while the girls assumed both male and female roles regularly. Finally, in all forms of play, the boys were generally
"louder" and in non-viewing play, the boys played "rougher." 238 Closely related to how the games were played was what the themes were in these games and how these themes were related to trad ition al forms of play.
Television-based play and traditional forms of play. Both viewing and non-viewing play included elements of trad ition al children's play; however, viewing play was less sim ilar to trad itio n al play than was non-viewing play. While non-viewing play was a more direct variation of the traditional games, viewing play not only was a variation, but i t also was more closely related to the language s k ills of its players
(e.g., egocentric speech).
In each form of television-based play there were some clearly identifiable themes which were related to traditional play and some themes which appeared in both kinds of television play.
In viewing play, the newly identified "Game of '5' and Others," which were games where the children sang along with and repeated phrases along with the television, were modern-day versions of the traditional "Singing," "Dialogue" and "Acting" games. The newly identified "Games of 'I'" which included games where the children described their relationship to TV content included variations of the trad itio n al "Follow the Leader" game (e .g ., I f you are somebody on
TV, then I can be somebody on TV, too). F in a lly , the newly id en tified
"Game of 'Let's'" and the negotiating games involved the children inviting others or requesting to join others in a variety of activi tie s during television viewing including games such as "Jumping." The
"Let's" and negotiating games were similar to the "Starting a Game" 239 game described by the Opies (1969).
In the non-viewing context, the dominant trad ition al themes
included "Good Guys versus Bad Guys" or "War"; "Doctor," "Hospital," or "Road Accidents"; "Anything-You-Can-Do-I-Can-Do-(Better!)" or
"Follow the Leader"; and, "Singing and Entertaining" or "Singing,"
"Dialogue" and "Acting" games.
The common trad itio n al themes appearing in both forms of te le vision play, then, included the games of "Singing," "Dialogue," and
"Acting" and "Follow the Leader." In terms of enacting these and other games, there were at least two more s im ila ritie s between te le vision play and trad itio n al play. In both kinds of play, the children combined elements from d iffe re n t games into one game. For example, the game of "Jumping" was added to the "Game of '5 '" and i t was added to
"Good Guys versus Bad Guys." Also, in both forms of play, the games the children selected emphasized different activities and ultimately the development of d iffe re n t s k ills . In the particular case of te le vision games, viewing play was more language-based, while non-viewing play was more activity-motion-oriented.
Uses and functions of television-based play. The major functional assumption made in this study was that children used television and television-based materials in their play and talk to aid in their developing understanding of themselves. Specifically, they learned about themselves in relation to th e ir a ffe c tiv e worlds (fe e lin g s ), their objective worlds (things), and their social worlds (people).
The children used television play in several different ways to help them understand more about themselves and to help them in the 240 development of various s k ills . In p a rtic u la r, television play helped the children understand what kinds of a c tiv itie s and things were "fun" and aided in their experiences of "excitement." It also helped the children understand what was painful to them. In this way the ch ild ren learned more about their "affective" world. This form of play also helped the children develop and refine skills for dealing with their objective and social worlds.
Television-based play helped the children learn about th e ir ob jective worlds. One of the most useful" functions in this area for these younger children was that i t helped them develop th e ir language skills. Presentations of the familiar and the unfamiliar on television aided the children during their identification games in acquiring appropriate and agreed upon labeling s k ills . Other language-based games during television viewing allowed the children to further test, clarify, and verify the information they used in creating'their social re a litie s . Successful id e n tific a tio n of objects in th e ir worlds and successful participation in these language-based games contributed to the children's developing self-esteem. For the children, the ability to successfully predict television content and formats also served as a positive source fo r the development of the children's views of them selves.
In addition to the functions described above, dramatic television play provided other useful functions including aiding in the develop ment of imagination skills, creativity, and abstract thought (also see
Smilansky, 1968; Singer, 1973). This form of play also helped children "think through," dissect, and make less threatening 241 frightening events.
In terms of content, television provided children, especially those with limited opportunities and experiences, with more ideas for play variationso The more roles the children were able to assume, the more they began to understand th e ir own capab ilities which they might not have otherwise considered or attempted to test. This form of play, then, helped the children broaden th e ir understanding of them selves in relation to their objective worlds.
The children's knowledge of themselves in relation to their social worlds was also expanded through television play. In viewing play they learned how to interact with others in group situations. Many of these interactions were dyadic in nature, even those where several children were present in the room, e.g., Bobby and Holly talking primarily to each other. In the viewing context, the children tested power and control they had over others, and learned to what extent others could control them. The children, then, developed and refined their social skills in the viewing context.
The children also learned that viewing play offered them an opportunity to be with others and to feel a part of the group. Tele vision play provided a communal function (see Foley, 1968 and McCain,
1972). For the younger children, viewing play involving interactions with television characters may have also resulted in those children gaining satisfaction from parasocial relationships. While generally the parasocial relationships that the younger children had could be considered normal due to their limited cognitive abilities to deter mine what's real and what's pretend, potential dysfunctions could 242 occur. One would be i f the children began to prefer and seek out television relationships to the exclusion of "real" relationships. A second would be i f the young children had opportunities to have face- to-face contact with the people they saw on TV, the children might become upset i f the TV character or personality did not respond to the children the way he or she did on TV or was expected to respond
(also see Dorr, 1977).
In the non-viewing context, television play also provided the children with an opportunity to be with others, specifically those with whom they shared a common knowledge about television . For the young children, instead of just talking about the common knowledge as adults and older children do, the younger children relied heavily on playing.
So, while television provided a conversation function for both children and adults, it also provided a play function for children (see Foley,
1968 and McCain, 1972 for discussion of conversation function). This play provided the children with an opportunity to test and develop their social skills. Also, through the roles they chose and were allowed to enact by those around them, the children added new in fo r mation to their knowledge about themselves. In some instances the children assumed roles that allowed them to significantly alter their
"real world" relationships with others, e.g., a superhero identity which allowed the child to challenge successfully another child the
"superhero" was usually afraid of.
Another way children sometimes brought television characters into their play was through the doors of their imaginations. These imagi nary characters brought fun and excitement to the children's play 243 especially when those characters were bad guys. In most cases, the children's use of imaginary characters in their play was healthy, and, as with other aspects of make-believe play, the presence of these characters helped the children develop the groundwork fo r c re a tiv ity , abstract thought, etc. Potential dysfunctions occur with this para
social relationship when the children seek out and prefer imaginary friends over real friends.
Television-Based Play and Social Context
This discussion begins with an analysis of the broader dimensions of the social context, culture and time, and then moves to analyze the specific elements of the social context in this study including the social actors and social setting. These factors are then used to help illu s tra te both the macroscopic and microscopic consequences the social setting has for the phenomena of television-based play.
Culture and Time. Television is not yet a world-wide phenomenon to which all children have daily access. Furthermore, for those children who do have daily access to televisio n , the assumption cannot be made that they have access to the same kinds o f programs. Conse quently, television-based play, when and where it exists, is likely to be culture-specific.
In cultures where television is present, the assumption that some form of television-based play w ill be found also cannot be made.
Smilansky (1968) and M illa r (1974) both report that make-believe play is not necessarily present in all cultures and it is certainly not played with the same frequency or by children of similar ages across 244 all cultures. Since much of the non-viewing play identified in this study was a form of make-believe play, the Smilansky and M illa r obser vations also contribute to the assumption that television-based play is culture-specific when and where this form of play exists. The widest possible application of the results and discussion materials, then, at best, would be to children of Anglo-American cultures.
In the cultures where television play exists, this play appears to change as the cultures change. S p ecifically, this play appears to reflect the changing content of the popular media of the day. In fact, the resulting changes in play themes can be described as part of an evolution of television-based games.
At the day care center, several teachers commented about the rise and fall in popularity of certain television-based games. This change in popularity was most closely related to the current offering of television programs. One teacher suggested that these changes were almost cyclical to the extent that as "old" games gradually disappeared from the children's play, "new" games gradually took their place.
I t also appears that within American culture a sim ilar cycle or evolution has occurred based on variations of content themes. The most popular day care center television play theme was "Good Guys versus Bad Guys." This theme most frequently appeared in the play about superheroes ("Batman") and superpeople ("Bionic Man"). Other research conducted in the mid-to-late seventies also reported that
"superhero" play was very popular with preschool children.
During this same time period of the domination of the superhero theme in preschool children's play, the major "Good Guys versus Bad 245
Guys" television programs included cops and robbers in "re a lis tic "
detective programs and the fantastical struggles between superheroes
and "superbad guys." Of these two kinds of programs, the superhero
theme was more attractive to the children for a number of reasons.
One was that the children perceived the superheroes were more power
ful than the "realistic" cops, and so the children were attracted to
the more powerful figures. Second, the superheroes had more dis
tinguishable props and easy-to-imitate actions. Third, more children
had opportunities to watch superhero programs which usually came on
Saturday mornings and in the f ir s t hour of prime time.
In the 1950s when the researcher and some of her contemporaries participated in television-based play, the major games in the "Good
Guys versus Bad Guys" play were not about superheroes, but instead were based on cowboys and Indians. In cowboys and Indians, the cow boys had hats and guns, the Indians had feathers, war bonnets, and bows and arrows; and both cowboys and Indians had horses. Another popular game was war. Here the Americans got to fig h t the Germans and other enemies.
During this same time period, American television was saturated with cowboy programs and reruns of old cowboy movies. By the seven tie s , however, the cowboys versus Indian programs had long since dis appeared from the screen. At the day care center in the present re search, the game of cowboys and Indians was observed only once and that was when some boys had plastic cowboy and Indian figurines and the boys pretended to have a fight with those figures. 246 In both the f if t ie s and the seventies, then, i t appears that the dominant themes or content trends in children's television play, especially in the "Good Guys versus Bad Guys" play, may have been d ire c tly related to dominant television program themes and ultim ately corporate television network programming decisions (e.g., the demise of the "Western" in American television and the rise of the comic book heroes and other superhuman characters in children's cartoons and some prime-time programs).
While the changes cited above and others have been noted in children's games, generally, children's games have been reported to be very constant, resisting significant changes over several centuries
(Opies, 1969). The children's preference fo r these games, however, can and does change over time (Sutton-Smith & Rosenberg, 1961). Most of the television-based games observed were variations on more traditional games, and hence represented changes in those games, but perhaps not revolutionary changes.
These television-based play variations of traditional games gave the modern child an opportunity to emphasize the development of language s k ills and social s k ills . Modern children, while s t il l basically having the same needs as children of previous generations, may "sense" a need to emphasize the f u lf illin g of needs d iffe re n t from those previous generations emphasized, e .g ., the s k ills fo r successful social interaction rather than the skills to become a skilled crafts man, home maker, or w arrior. The children may develop this "sense," in part, based on their interpretations of television portrayals of what people do and how people do the things they do. Sutton-Smith and 247 Rosenberg (1961) reported that g irls were showing a s h ift away from
domestic-based play (e .g ., House) towards more glamorous forms of
play (e.g., Dress-up). This potential shift in the modern children's
needs, then, may be reflected in the children's choices and prefer
ences in play, and result in the development of variations of their
play such as the "game of watching television."
A serious question to consider is to what extent, if at a ll, might television-based play replace and render extinct some traditional
games, especially to the extent the television-game variations devi
ate more and more from the original game. Singer (1973) suggested
that a distinct possible consequence of television was that the
traditional myths and folklore (content) preserved by traditional
play over the centuries may be lost as children turn to the folklore or content of television. He also suggested that the shift in myths and folklore utilized in the play did not make television-based play
less functional to the children.
The most obvious consequence of television play on trad ition al play is that content is replaced. The structure of the games is much more resistant to change, but i t too may experience some changes. For example, games during television viewing require the additional role of the television . The presence of the television in the children's games results in new patterns of interaction including the amount and kind of influence children have during those games. To the extent that the role o f television can be viewed as another "person" in th e ir en vironment, it can be argued that the children's viewing game does not deviate from more traditional games; to the extent that the role of 248 television can be viewed as a simple replacement of the scripts from traditional games, then, here also, it can be argued that the children's viewing game does not deviate from traditional play; but, to the extent television is viewed as a "non-person-extra-script phenomenon," then viewing play (as opposed to non-viewing play) may signal a significant deviation from traditional children's play. This later possibility merits further consideration in future research.
The social context of the day care center. Within the broader context of culture and time, the children at the day care center in the present research played television-based games. These games were affected by the people and physical objects in the setting and the resulting interactions among those people, objects, and locations.
The social actors were very important in this study for it was they who selected, played, developed and supervised the televisio n - based games observed. Because individual children had preferences for different and similar television-based make-believe characters, each c h ild 's presence in the center had consequences fo r the games played.
Because the children were of d iffe re n t ages and sexes, how those games were enacted very much depended in part on which of these children were playing. For example, the way a three-year-old g irl played
"Batman" was very different from the way a six-year-old boy played
"Batman." F in a lly , because the children had varying amounts of power and influence within the children's culture, who the "play leaders" were was important fo r understanding dominant play themes. In this p articu lar social system, the older boys and boys in general were the 249 most frequent players of group games, and they also maintained control over the play when girls joined them. All the children in this setting had knowledge about television content and it was reflected in their play.
The adults in the setting also had influence over the television- based games. At the day care center, the popular teacher who had a positive attitud e towards Starsky and Hutch and toward play based on those characters was in part responsible for the popularity of those characters at the center. In the home setting, the attitudes of parents who fe lt television-based play was "perfectly fine" and the participation of some parents in their children's television-based play and ta lk also helped create an environment where the children f e lt com fortable playing television-based games. The adults, then, impacted upon this process of television play through th e ir a ttitu d es , in te r actions with the children during this play, and the rules they imposed which could help or hinder that play.
The objects available in the children's social setting were also important determinants of the children's play. As earlier reported certain objects and structures encouraged play about specific programs and characters. These objects also appealed to or had d iffe re n t
social value for the different children in this system which was partially based on the children's sex and age. Of course, in this particular study, one of the most important objects, particularly during viewing play, was the television set.
Finally, closely related to the objects was in what location(s) the play was enacted. The non-viewing play was frequently enacted in 250 d iffe re n t ways depending on whether the play occurred inside or out side. For example, at the day care center most props were only available for use during inside play activities; consequently, the direct influence of those props was on inside games.
The social context, both in terms of the overall culture and time period and in terms of the specific factors within the day care center selected, had d e fin ite consequences for the phenomenon of television - based play observed in this study. These consequences, in turn, were observed and made sense of and the rules and structures and functions of television play were identified. One last point about the setting was that the day care center did not represent an aberration from the culture of children's play. Because these children were a part of a culture that has been transmitted to children over centuries and be cause these children interacted with other children who did not attend the center including older sisters and brothers, the structure of the play of the children at the center was probably more similar than dif ferent from the play of children at other day care centers and even in private homes and back yards. Also, in terms of themes, concurrent research reported the same ones reported in the present research.
Television-Based Play and Children's Television Program and Character Preferences and Consumption
An examination of the relationship between television-based play in the non-viewing setting revealed no apparent relations between the amount of viewing and the frequency of television play. Both high and low four- and five-year-old consumers were found to be frequent players 251 of television games. However, the teachers suggested there were seasonal variations in the frequency of television-based games, and these variations corresponded to the children's seasonal consumption patterns (e.g., more TV-based games played during the winter and higher consumption of television during the winter). An alternate explanation would be that winter play was primarily inside play where the games were more language and less action based and where the teachers could hear the content of the games more easily.
There was a weak suggestion that the kinds of programs watched were related to certain forms of play activities. Five-year-old Jill was a high consumer of adult-action adventure programs in comparison to the other girls. In her play she appeared to be much more physically active and aggressive than were the other girls. On the other hand the reverse appeared to be the case with four-year-old
Mitch. He was a low consumer of adult-action adventure programs and he was less physically active and aggressive in his play.
The Singers noted similar findings in their research. They also suggested that there was no apparent relationship between amount of viewing enactment of television-based games, while at the same time cautiously suggesting there might be a relationship between the kinds of programs viewed and certain kinds of play behaviors. This observa tion was also supported by many of the violence and aggression studies.
In terms of age trends, both television viewing and playing TV- based games appeared to peak with the five-year-old children. Before fiv e , TV-based play was already "peaking" while television viewing was not yet that popular. After five, TV-based play declined considerably 252 in its popularity, while TV viewing continued to peak.
In terms of program and character preferences and TV-based play, the children did not frequently pretend to be the characters that they said were their favorites in the group play at the day care center.
The children did, however, frequently pretend to be the characters that their parents reported to be their favorites. The parents' cri teria for identifying their children's favorite characters was found to be in part based upon what the parents saw and heard th e ir children play and talk about.
Other preference related observations included the boys reporting they had female favorite characters, but these same boys did not pretend to be females in their play. Also, the four-year-old children who were reported to be the strongest viewers of Sesame Street at home were more likely to pretend they were Sesame Street characters at home.
Television-Based Play and the Children's Perceptions about Television
The most obvious relationship here was that the children used television play to test, clarify, and verify what they saw and heard on televisio n . When these preschool children watched television they did not necessarily see the same things that adults saw, so what they were testing was not necessarily what adults might expect them to test.
A personal example the researcher recalls was related to her particu la r fondness fo r war movies and programs when she was a ch ild . The a t traction these movies and programs held was not due to the b attle scenes, fighting, and violence, but instead was due to the demonstra tions of male comradeship. 254 relationship resulted in positive consequences for the children, so too, did it result in possible negative consequences for the children.
The theme of "good" versus "bad." The folklore of television te lls young children that there are good guys and bad guys in this world. This view of the world is a comfortable and isomorphic f i t for the children with limited cognitive abilities including "binary thinking" (see Noble, 1975). However, when television content sug gests that "good" characters are not totally good and "bad" charac ters are not to ta lly bad, the children may not be able to understand those differences. Instead, they see all the acts of the good guys as good--even the good guys' bad acts. In this situation, then, there is the distinct possibility that the children interpret the good guys' bad acts as socially acceptable. These acts in turn may be incorpor ated into the children's play for testing and clarifying and later possibly incorporated into the children's repertoire of social behaviors. Based on her media experiences, the researcher recalls that she once assumed that one of the most effective ways fo r a "lady" to deal with a stubborn or recalcitran t male was to smack his face lik e the ladies on TV and in the movies did. Her male playmates helped her learn alternate methods of dealing with them during playl
In the present research a four-year-old boy was disturbed about a television program that made it clear to him that a cop could be a bad guy. Because this subject "loved" his police shows and fireman shows, and frequently played games based on those programs, the dis comfort he fe lt from the contradictory information may have led him to ultimately reject the disconfirming information about cops. If he had 253 One of the most important kinds of information the young children attended to and attempted to make sense of was the social actions of television characters. This coincided with their needs to develop social skills. The young children's interpretations of these observed television social actions had certain consequences fo r how the children enacted their television play. It is important to note that the children also did not assign meaning to television content in the same way adults did partially due to limited cognitive abilities of children as well as their limited life experiences.
The discussion below s p e c ific ally addresses some of the children's perceptions about televisio n and the relationship of those assumptions to television play.
Television stereotypes and children's play. The children watched alot of prime-time television programming, and in fact, a large number of th e ir television pretend characters came from these programs. Per haps the major similarity between the weekly serials and children's play was that they were both highly stereotyped. The make-believe play of children had been described as very stereotyped (see M illar,
1974). So, too, had the content of American commercial been described as stereotyped and highly predictable (see Dorr, 1977). Because one of the needs of the young children was to gain control over their environment and be able to predict what's going to happen, the stereo typed format of American television may be serving a valuable function for the children. Also, the stereotyped nature of television made it highly compatible with the children's play. However, while this 255 had been closer to his "cognitive revolution" or next stage of cog nitive development, this experience could have provided him with
"fodder" for making that cognitive leap.
Sex roles. The children learned alot of information about male and female roles from television. Unfortunately, the view they learned was a sexist view and this view filtered down into the children's television play (see Tuchman, 1978 and U.S. Civil Rights
Commission, 1977, 1979).
Specifically, the children learned that women were more re stricted in the kinds of things they could do, and that in American television dramas, frequently women were not important and hence expendable. This translated over into the children's play as reasons for excluding girls from group games, and confining the girls to less powerful roles when they did join group play. The lack of a variety of female role models (in comparison to the variety of male role models),and the undesirable roles of women who were available for role models, in part"explained why g irls frequently turned to male roles in their play while boys seldom turned to female roles. The researcher, once again, recalls from her childhood, her reaction to women in the media. In many forms of drama including war and cowboy movies and programs she saw women as "spoilers" of best-friend relationships, e.g., male best friends fall in love with the same woman and the men become enemies. The boys' reaction in the present study may have also been similarly interpreted as "we don't want any girls to play because they will 'spoil' our game." 256
The major relationship here, then, was sexist TV portrayals resulted in sexist play. One encouraging note was that the children's play based on less sexist programming, e .g ., Captain Marvel and Is is , resulted in group play with more equality between the sexes.
Two important factors must be considered when trying to deter mine to what extent has sexist television portrayals influenced children's play. The firs t observation is that boys and girls have traditionally played some games together and some games separately, so this discussion in no way implies that television has caused a separa tion of the sexes in children's play. A second factor is that girls historically have been more attracted to realistic roles while boys have been more attracted to the fantastical roles. The attempts of the girls in the present study to enter the fantastical play of the boys may have suggested that the g irls were in part responding to the non-sexist programing where women had important roles, e.g., Bionic
Woman and Wonder Woman. So, when trying to understand the precise relationship between sexist programming trends and children's play, the facts that children have traditionally played some games separately based on sex and that there are an increasing number of less-sexist presentations of women must be considered.
Ethnic and race-related roles. Not only has American television programming been reported to be sexist, i t has also been reported to be racist in its presentation of minorities (see U.S. Civil Rights
Commission, 1977, 1979). Just as with women, the content of American television has indicated that minorities are not important, expen dable, not to be taken seriously, or non-existent. 257
One way the children learned about and applied television's por
trayal of minorities to their play is that they chose not to include
minority characters in their play repertoire. One of the main reasons
for this exclusion was that there were few if any minority characters
who were the most powerful figures in the programs the children
watched. Most of the minority characters, when present in dramatic
programming, were "second bananas" or subordinates to Whites. These
roles were not attractive to or fun for the children at the day care
center. An interesting question would be to what extent are the non
powerful minority dramatic characters attractive to minority children
for use in their play.
Another reason why some children, especially the boys, may have opted not to select minority television characters for their play was that the children believed the minority, and in some cases ethnic, characters were automatically the "bad guys." It has generally been observed that the "bad guy" roles are less a ttra ctiv e to the children than are the "good guy" roles the children assume in their make-believe play.
Another possible use of the lack of minority powerful figures by the children is that minority children, much like girls, would be excluded from play or confined to less powerful roles. This use of television play was not necessarily observed in the present study, but i t should be noted that one quiet four-year-old Black male was on several occasions observed to be upset because he had been told he could not play with the other boys involved in a game. The researcher did not know the other boys' reasons fo r excluding the Black c h ild , nor 258 did she explore in detail why the boys excluded other White boys from their play.
The major relationship here, then, was that racist TV portrayals resulted in possible racist play. TV gave the children, for the most part, "lily-white" characters with "lily-white" scripts.
The major exception to the above observation was that there were some programs which did include m inorities such as Sesame Street and there were comedy programs in which m inorities appeared. The major point to be made here, however, was that the children in the present study did not select their characters for group dramatic play from these kinds of programs. An interesting question would be to what extent do minority children incorporate the characters from children's programs (educational) and situation comedies in th e ir group dramatic play. A footnote to this exception is that the minority characters in the situation comedies have frequently been criticized for their nega tive portrayals of their respective minority groups, and if minority children used these characters as models for play, this usage might represent a dysfunction for those children.
Other factors and children's play. Television play, especially viewing play, helped the children develop some of th e ir perceptions about television and i t also helped them develop "television literacy" or a means by which they more e ffic ie n tly made sense of television fare. Specifically, television play helped the children identify what p articu lar cues meant. These cues included music cues indicating a program was coming to an end, verbal phrases indicating a commercial was coming on, e .g ., "And now a message from our sponsor." Other cues 259
the children learned to make sense of included production techniques
such as the slow motion used during the bionic running. With the
older children, television literacy included their growing skepticism
over commercials, such as "That toy's not really that big."
Another factor was the relationship between the children's percep
tions of reality and television and how these perceptions interacted
with the children's television play. The observation made here was
that to a certain extent both forms of television play helped the
children learn what was pretend and what was real on television and in
society, when the children had developed s u ffic ie n t cognitive s k ills
to make those distinctions.
Finally, the observation can be offerred that television-play
probably provides "fodder" for the children moving into the next
stage of cognitive development to exercise those new skills, e.g.,
enacting play that has complicated, linear sequences.
Television-Based Play and Developmental and Sex Trends
The primary subjects in this study ranged in age from three years
old to six years old. All except two of the subjects were five or
under and i t was assumed that most, i f not a ll of them, would be in
Piaget's pre-operational stage of cognitive development. I t was also
realized that the six-year-old children as well as some of the five- year-old children may have begun to experience the "cognitive revolu tion" which ushered the children into the next stage of cognitive development, concrete operational. Finally, it was assumed that the seven-year-old secondary and tertiary subjects had probably already 260 entered the concrete operational stage (see Noble, 1975; Piaget, 1974;
Ward, et a l., 1977).
Previous research in both television-uses by children as well as research on children's play had convincingly argued that developmental trends helped explain differences in children's behavior in both of those areas. Such was the case in this research where the intersection of television-use and play occurred.
More than any other factor, the children's chronological ages accounted for the most differences in their television play. These differences included how those games were played. Age also accounted for differences in how children made sense of television content, what the children's preferences were for programs and characters, and what television programs they watched, how many programs they watched, and how much of a p articu lar program they watched.
Specifically, in terms of age and television-based games in the viewing context i t appeared that younger children, especially the three- to five-year-old children, frequently and much more than did the children six and older, played the "games of 'I'." This game, more than any other described in this study, reflected the children's egocentrism, which typifies children in the pre-operational stage of cognitive development. The children tended to view television s p e c ifi cally in terms of their own personal experiences. The most vocal performers of this game were the four- and five-year-old children.
As the children got older, there were several other consequences of age on th e ir play. F irs t, the plots became more complex; second, the size of the children's play groups increased; third, the children's 261
attraction to and preferences for certain props and structures
changed; and, fourth, the children's attraction to and use of certain
characters and programs in th e ir play changed.
Television play provided the children with a source of f u lf illin g
a variety of th e ir needs. According to Sutton-Smith, games "would
not have th e ir meaningful ness to children i f they were not thus in
trin s ic a lly related to the fabric of human development" (1972, p. 214).
Such is the case, also, with television play.
Sex trends were also related to the children's uses of television-
based play. The major differences were that in the non-viewing con
text, boys and girls preferred different games and played some of the same games in different ways. In the viewing context, the boys were
louder than the girls as was the case in the non-viewing play. In the viewing context, other than for the volume, the boys'and g irls ' be
haviors were more alike than different.
The Multi-Method Approach to Studying Children and Their Television Uses
This study made use of two major research methods: participant observation and intensive interviews. In the case of the interviews, not only were the children interviewed, but, so, too, were their parents and the day care center teachers. Each research strategy was found to o ffe r something valuable and unique to this study.
The major advantages of the observation method was that i t did not have to rely on the recall data from the three groups of respondents, that it provided a valuable way to circumvent the limited cognitive a b ilitie s of the younger respondents to report th e ir experiences, and 262 that it provided several opportunities for the researcher to observe as well as sit, listen, and talk to the children about their television- based beliefs and experiences. It is the opinion of this researcher that some of the younger and more shy children would have been unwil
ling, afraid, and/or much less responsive if the researcher had not been someone that they had learned to like and trust. The relation ship the children had with the researcher was important to the kinds of data that were collected. Even more importantly, it provided the researcher with the opportunity to get to know the children as individ uals and to try to understand more how television f i t into each of th e ir liv e s . For examples, when a six-year-old child reported "Mickey
Mouse"was real, but that every other cartoon character was pretend, the researcher was able to refer back to the child's trip to an amuse ment park where the child saw a life -s iz e Mickey Mouse walking around.
The researcher found several incidences where the fie ld notes were much better "describers" and "explainers" of phenomena than were the interview notes. In fact, the field notes were invaluable to the interviews because (1) the fie ld notes helped determine the focus of the study and hence important questions to ask in the interviews,
(2) were very useful in helping analyze and make sense of the inter view notes, and (3) were instrumental in the decision to interview the teachers in this research. And finally, the field notes were useful for making some "corrections" in the recall data that both the children and the teachers offered.
At the end of the study, the researcher was also very happy to have the interview data because the formal interview situation 263 provided a systematic procedure to discuss in detail with each child, their parents, and the teachers the children's television experiences.
Specifically, it provided the researcher with the opportunity to "tie up loose ends," or ask questions about observations and tentative propositions that had been developed.
The parent and teacher interviews were valuable for a variety of reasons. The parents were able to provide certain kinds of informa tion about the children's home consumption of television that the children were unable to report, e .g ., how many hours a week does the child watch TV and what programs are regularly watched. The parents also provided insight to how and what games the children played at home, e.g., they reported play based on Sesame Street that was not observed at the center by the researcher or the teachers.
The teachers provided background information on the children as well as offered their observations about different trends in tele vision-based play. They were able to substantiate some of the researcher's observations as well as add different and useful inter pretations of what they saw. Notably here were their observations about the lack of "violence" in television-based play and the obser vations about the evolution of television-based play. Some points they suggested were worthy of future consideration, e .g ., the children played more television-based games in the winter than in the summer.
Perhaps one of their most valuable contributions during the interviews were some of their descriptions of television-based game variations that the researcher did not see or of which the researcher saw very little , e.g., Bionic House. 264
The children's interviews were valuable because they provided
additional insight into how the children "thought" about television,
what they believed about television. These intensive interviews
allowed the researcher to probe into "puzzling" responses, e.g.,
learning "why" a three-year-old child thought everything on television
was "real," and a five-year-old child thought "Steve Austin" was real
but his bionics were pretend. These probes led to the identification
of constructs preschoolers used to make their distinctions between
what was real and pretend on television. For example the three-year-
old's logic was simply if something could be seen, then it was real;
consequently, everything seen on television was real.
The above discussion attempted to draw together the findings
in this report and identify important relationships. The major areas
of discussion included a comparison of the two forms of television
play to each other and traditional play, the role of the social con
text, relationships between children's uses and views of television to
th e ir television play, developmental and sex differences in that play,
and fin a lly advantages of u tiliz in g a multi-method approach fo r this
type of study.
Implications and Recommendations
The implications of the present research are considered in terms of pragmatic concerns, theoretical concerns, and methodological concerns.
Pragmatic Implications
On the pragmatic le v e l, several d iffere n t audiences can be addressed: television programmers and decision-makers, government and 265
public policy makers, educators, parents. In the following discussion,
however, the most important of all of these groups for the relation
ship a young child will develop with television is the parents. Con
sequently, this discussion addresses what the implications of this research are for parents who have young children.
Three general recommendations are offered:
1. Children need not totally be banned from television viewing, as long as parents take an active, conscientious role in their children's viewing experiences.
I t is hard to address television-based play without addressing
television viewing in general, so this firs t recommendation is about
the role parents should assume in the children's viewing activities.
I t should be noted that this recommendation in no way implies that
television should be the dominant a c tiv ity in which a young child
participates; instead, parents and children alike should view te le vision watching as only one among many activities in which children
(and their parents) can participate. Specifically, when the children do watch television, parents should be concerned with monitoring the content of the programs th e ir children watch and the amount of time the children spend watching television (see also Singer & Singer,
1977).
In terms of content, there are some kinds of programs the parents should consider selecting for their children to watch because these programs provide the children with information about their worlds, e.g., what children are like and do in other countries. Some programs can be selected because the children are entertained by them and the children find the programs funny. Humor is a great remedy for the 266
stress that even small children experience. S till other programs can
be selected because the programs can be used as teaching tools by the
parent, e .g ., showing the small child how to handle animals or react
to strangers. In the television diet a parent establishes for his or
her ch ild , children's programs, animal programs, some cartoons, and
musical variety shows should be considered. Also, because many of
the child's peers will be watching television, and by the time these
children are three or four they w ill probably be basing some of th e ir
play on television characters, parents might consider lim ited exposure
to and/or talking to their children about other programs likely to be
popular in children's play. This would be the case for programs
that were acceptable to the parents for their children to view, but
the programs came on too la te , as well as for programs the parents
found objectionable. In the case of objectionable programs, parents might want to possibly attempt to diffuse any undesired interpretations or effects of that program by explaining why the parents do not like
the program. For example, a program or series of programs that con
tinually showed women in subordinate roles to men might result in the
parents instructing their children that while men are often "bosses" so
too are women "bosses" and that the "TV" must have forgotten to te ll
the children about those "boss-women."
Programs that parents should consider deleting from the children's television d ie t include news programs and programs which depict re a lis tic violence. These programs can be upsetting to young children, as can "scary" programs which also should be deleted. 267
Parents should also monitor how much time their children spend with television. While controlled watching of television can be very beneficial to children, uncontrolled viewing can be harmful. The child who watches televisio n a ll day may learn to become mentally passive. Instead of developing his or her imagination, he or she simply watches and absorbs. Instead of playing with other children and developing his or her social skills, the child becomes lost in a fantasy world that begins to fu lfill too many of his or her social needs.
For the enlightened parent who does restrict his or her child's viewing, that parent now has the additional responsibility of pro viding that child with a variety of real life experiences so the child can constructively fill his or her time. If a child's life is rich enough in other experiences, he or she has less time to be
"trapped" all day into solitary viewing of television.
Also, as might be expected, if the parents wants to lim it his or her child's television viewing, he or she may have to lim it his or her own viewing.
2. Make TV viewing a family and/or group activity where active discussions and play about the content being viewed are encouraged.
There is no reason why the television viewing situation cannot serve as one of the many training grounds for young children to learn about and practice their social skills. In the viewing situation children should feel free to ask questions about what they are viewing. Parents should attempt to help the children understand and 268 interpret what the children are seeing, and at the same time recognize the cognitive limitations of their novice viewers.
When possible, parents and children should consider developing th e ir own sets of "viewing play" around regularly watched programs.
This play can provide an opportunity for parents and children to be together at a specific time of the day; it can help the children develop language and id e n tific a tio n s k ills , e .g ., games about naming objects that appear on the screen; it can involve singing and imagina tion games; it can involve games of calling the child's attention to specific kinds of content where the child may have to have some kind of delayed response. This form of "play" can have a number of possi bilities and it is as boundless as the parent-child mind.
3. Encourage TV-based play in the non-viewing context as well as other forms of make-believe play.
I t has been demonstrated that television can be a source of ideas for creative application to children's make-believe play. It has also been demonstrated that television play can serve several valuable functions for young children including helping the children to gain a better understanding of themselves and th e ir a ffe c tiv e worlds, their objective worlds, and their social worlds. It has been suggested that make-believe play lays the ground work for the develop ment of creative and imaginative skills and abstract thought. So, for these reasons, parents should consider encouraging th e ir children to participate in make-believe play. Research has not verifie d some parent concerns that make-believe play is harmful to children. Instead, reports suggest that the 269 children who are imaginative are more likely to interact with peers, share with peers, use more words, and use more complex language structures (Singer, 1978).
For parents who feel television may hurt the imaginativeness of their children's play, research suggests that imaginativeness of play may be improved, but once developed, i t is "resistant to destruction"
(Towers, e t a ! ., 1977, p. 20).
One way for parents to attempt to improve their children's play is to participate and help the children get started, but once the children have learned to be more creative in their non-viewing play, the parents should gracefully bow out and leave the children to their private worlds of play.
Methodological Implications
The major methodological implication of this research is that multi-method approaches should be encouraged and continued. Both participant observation and intensive interviews were found to be effective, complementary research tools in the day care center setting. The observations overcame the difficulty of relying totally on recall data. The formal interviews provided a systematic way of tying up loose ends and securing the perspectives of three different groups of respondents--the children, their parents, and the teachers.
As might be expected, in some instances, each group provided data that the other two groups did not report or the other groups reported in a d iffe re n t manner, and hence, each group contributed to the development of a fuller picture of the children's interaction with television. In 270 future research, other combinations of research methods might prove equally fruitful in other kinds of ways.
Other important implications relate to the selection of the subjects, the selection of the social setting, and the selection of specific participant observation research strategies.
Implications for the selection of the subjects include that for future research attempts should be made to include an age-sex balanced sample. This is p a rtic u la rly the case i f children of d if ferent ages are being investigated, because age and developmental differences are so dominant among the preschoolers. Otherwise, it will be difficult for the researcher to determine if some differences are primarily age-based, sex-based, or both. Because age differences were so pervasive in this research, testing the children for develop mental ages should be considered so that both chronological and developmental ages are available fo r data analysis. F in a lly , some attempts should be made to include children who have very little or no interaction with television. A small minority of parents today do not permit their children to watch television or do not have televisions in their homes. It would be interesting to note to what extent, if at a ll, television has meaning in these children's lives.
Implications for future research and the selection of the social setting include investigating play in day care centers where tele vision is not present, conducting investigations in the home, con ducting studies at different times of the year, conducting studies with children from d iffe re n t socio-economic groups, conducting studies 271 with children from different minority groups, and considering cross- cultural studies, e .g ., compare American TV play to Japanese TV play
(if there is such an activity of Japanese TV play).
Implications for future participant observation data collection strategies include considering the use of male-female pairs of observers in a setting with both boys and girls. In the present research, the female researcher was probably more successful entering the culture of the girls. Similarly, a male observer might be more successful entering the culture of the boys; however, the male researcher would undoubtedly be more obtrusive in a setting with a ll female teachers.
If audio tape recorders are used for data collection, find dis creet ways of placing the tape recorders so as not to draw unnecessary attention to them, and in this process, do not underestimate the in quisitiveness of the preschooler's roving eye. Once the children in the present study recognized what the tape recorder looked lik e , they almost seemed to enjoy looking fo r i t and were sure to ask i f the researcher had brought i t with her. While the researcher was generally
"very honest" with the children when they asked her questions about the recorder, in future research the less the children know about the recorder, the less the children will be intrigued by it —maybe.
If a microphone is used with the tape recorder, attempts should be made to avoid microphones that look lik e the microphones singers use on TV, because the children may want to use the microphones for sim ilar purposesl In fa c t, barring price concerns and potential ethical, invasion of privacy concerns, the ideal mic strategy would be Ill
using radio button microphones which could be connected to a child 's
clothing and provide data even on children's private play.
Theoretical Implications and Directions for Future ResearcF
The major theoretical-methodological assumption made in this
study was that the natural, spontaneous play and talk of children would be one of the most revealing sources of how children use te le
vision in th e ir everyday liv e s . The perspective of the children was
of paramount importance during the data collection and data analysis of this study. In addition, during the data analysis other theoretical
perspectives and paradigms were found to be useful for making sense of
the findings and identifying directions for future research. These
perspectives included developmental theory, children's play theories,
the uses and gratifications paradigm, and the social categories
theory. It is important to note that these perspectives were not mutually exclusive, and that they in fact had many similar assumptions.
For example, a ll of these perspectives assumed age or developmental
differences among children.
Developmental theory. Future research questions grounded in
developmental theory should seek additional data on how age is related
to children's use of TV play. The youngest children in this research
were three years old, and they already were demonstrating uses of TV
play. Some research has also reported TV-based materials in the play of children as young as two years old. Therefore, the following
question can be asked: 273
How do two- and three-year-old children use TV-based materials in th e ir play and communicative interactions?
The researcher includes three-year-old children in this exploratory research question because only one of her primary subjects was three years old, and as indicated earlier, this subject was included in the sample because she had been id en tified as a child who was four years old.
Because two years old might not be the starting point of TV play, an additional question is needed.
How, i f a t a l l , do children under two years old use TV-based materials in their play and other activities?
The researcher's thirteen-month-old daughter already bounces or
"dances" to music she hears on TV, and points to the screen as her mommy describes football plays to her.
Future investigations should also examine more closely the range of television play and talk of children within one chronological age and/or developmental stage in natural settings. This should be of particular interest with the four- and five-year-old children, because it is at these ages where television play may peak for most, but not necessarily all, children. Six year olds should also be included in these investigations.
Ultim ately, what could be developed would be an "Infancy through
Preschool Model of Theory of Television Play and Talk." Because children s till continue to engage in television play beyond six years o ld , although to a much lesser extent, the developmental study of television play could continue with children through their elementary school years and/or until television play appeared to become 274 non-existent. With the school age children, a closer analysis of their television ta lk could ensue. This lin e of research could lead to the development of a b irth to grave model of television play and talk as it occurred in natural settings.
Uses and gratifications. Some in itial questions generated from this perspective include examining more closely the role of parasocial relationships in both forms of television play. I f a functional perspective is adopted, a question which leads to the evaluation of the quality of TV play as a functional alternative to traditional play would be useful. In the present research, there has been nothing to suggest that non-viewing play is sig n ific a n tly in fe rio r in any way to trad ition al play; however, the game of watching television might be found to be functionally weaker or i t might be found to address a d iffe re n t need hierarchy. Questions generated from this perspective i nclude
To what extent, if at a ll, are viewing play and non-viewing play functionally weaker, equal to, or superior to traditional forms of play?
Also, because needs are critical to the understanding of uses and gratifications
To what extent, i f at a l l , have the perceived needs and hence the children's need system changed over time. What roles, if any, did (or is ) television have in the changing of that structure?
F in a lly , the work of William Stephenson on the Plav Theory of
Mass Communication (1967) warrants some consideration.
Social categories, psychological differences, and culture. Ques tions grounded in the social categories paradigm focus on sex, race, 275 and socio-economic differences.
Because the boys engaged in louder, higher action, and more group- oriented play, there was the distinct possibility 1n the present research that the girls' quieter, more solitary play was given less attention. Therefore, a re-examination of girls' television play including solitary play is recommended.
Race differences in the television-play of children might be expected so questions that attempt to investigate potential differences and similarities in race-related or minority-related television play are in order. The major minority groups to be investigated would include Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and East Asians. Any research with any or all of these minority groups should recognize the large degree of heterogeneity within each of these groups.
Socio-economic differences have been noted in children's play in general, consequently the television play of children of different socio-economic groups should be investigated.
Psychological differences might also be considered. Specifically, the Singers' line of research on imaginativeness and television play, and other research looking at the relationship of IQ, creativity, etc. might also be in lin e .
Finally, cross-cultural investigations focusing on how other children in other cultures, particularly non-Western, use television would be valuable to this line of research.
Play theories. While many of the questions related to play theory have already been addressed, additional directions might include the 276 adoption and rigorous application of some of the old and contemporary theories of children's play to the data collected in the present study as well as to data collected in future studies. Perhaps one of the more intriguing questions that has yet been offered has to do with identifying the nature of the children's private play and if there are any significant differences between that form of play and the play the children allow adults to hear.
A consideration of writings and theory on adult and animal play might prove useful in providing new insights. Huizinga (1950) might be a good starting place because of the references of the child play theorist to him.
And finally, additional support could be gathered to confirm or disconfirm the observation that dominant trends in children's play in
America reflect dominant content trends in the popular media of the day.
Limitations
Potential limitations for any research can enter in at any point in the research process. Such was the case in this project.
The selection of the context had overwhelming consequences fo r the data collected and analyzed. While it was argued earlier that the day care center selected had children whose play was not an aberration from the general culture o f children's play, there is always the distinct possibility that the play of the children at the center was more idiosyncratic than the researcher would like to assume. Future research will determine to what extent, if at a ll, the play of these Ill
children was "normal."
Another related concern was that day care center play, in and of
itself, represented a significant deviation from the experience of
most children. However, i t can be argued, as more and more mothers
return and enter the work force, more preschool children will be
finding preschools, day care centers, and group baby sitters a way of
life . This way of life is and will be affording the children oppor
tunities to learn and play TV-based and other forms of make-believe
group play.
Other potential limitations of the context included selecting a
time of year (public school closings) where there were several children
entering and leaving the day care center student population. According
to teacher reports, the time of year selected for this study was the
time of year when children engaged in television play the least, so
there might have been additional inside versions of some games which
might have been important to the findings of this study. Most of the
non-viewing play in this study was outside play.
The major problem with the selection of the subjects was that the age-sex distribution made it difficult during the data analysis to suggest which was the dominant influence—age or sex--in some areas.
Other problems included having a subject who was younger than was expected due to the previous age information given the researcher.
Data collection limitations entered when the tape recorders and microphones proved to be more obtrusive than was o rig in a lly anticipated.
These initial distractions took the children's attention away from other activities they would have been engaging in including television 278 play and talk.
Data analysis lim itations included the extended time period between the actual data collection and the final writing of this report. The major concern was that many of the details not recorded in the notes but that could later be possibly recalled were lost over the months as well as the researcher's sensitivity to that environment.
While both of these limitations probably did occur, there were other off-setting benefits. One was the opportunity to support many of the findings in this study with the findings from concurrent research.
The other was that the researcher fe lt that her developing academic maturity over the months resulted in a stronger final analysis.
Retrospect
Overall, the researcher feels that she met her objectives in this project. While, i f she were to do the study again, she would change a few things including context, use of audio tapes, and test for develop mental ages, several other features of the research might remain the same. Eleven subjects for one person to observe, interview, and then interview their parents generated more than enough varied obser vations and pools of data for analysis. Spending approximately two months in the field was a sufficient period of time to collect the necessary data. While the observations could have gone on indefinitely, the cut-off date for the observations was a fairly comfortable decision to make.
The experience of this research was exciting—both socially and intellectually. The researcher enjoyed most of the relationships she 279 developed with the children and th e ir teachers. But more importantly, she was amazed as she watched the children's world of television un fold before her eyes, both at the day care center and when analyzing the data several months later.
Cone!usion
This was a study that addressed the question of how young children use television in th e ir communicative interactions. The overwhelming finding here was that children use television and television-based play materials in their play. A further finding was that the children developed and enacted play based on television in two basic settings: during television viewing and in non-viewing settings. Television- based play, lik e trad itio n al forms of play, was found to f u l f i l l several different needs of the young children. And, finally, develop mental and age indicators were the strongest predictors of variations in television play. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Ward, S ., & Wackman, D. B. Family and media influences on adoles cent consumer learning. In E. A. Rubinstein, G. A. Comstock, & J. P. Murray (E ds.), Television and social behavior (Vol. IV ). Washington, D.C.: Government Printing O ffice, 1972 (a) 290 Ward, S., & Wackman, D. B. Television advertising and intra family influence: Children's purchase influence attempts and parental yielding. In E. A. Rubinstein, G. A. Comstock, & J. P. Murray (Eds.), Television and social behavior, television in day-to-day lif e : Patterns of use (Vol. IV ). Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1972 (b).
Ward, S., Wackman, D., & Wartella, E. How children learn to buy. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, Inc7,^l977.
W artella, E. The developmental perspective. In E. Wartella (E d.), Children communicating: Media and development of thought, speech, understanding. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, Inc., 1979 (a ). ------
W artella, E. (E d.). Children communicating: Media and development of thought, speech, understanding. Beverly H ills : Sage Publica tions, Inc., 1979 (b).
W artella, E., Alexander, A ., & Lemish, D. The mass media environ ment of children. Paper presented to the Speech Communication Convention, Minneapolis, Minn., November 2-5, 1978.
Watt, J. H., & Krull, R„ An examination of three models of tele vision viewing and aggression. Human Communication Research, Winter 1977, 3(2), 99-112.
Winick, M. P., & Winick, C. The television experience: What children see. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, Inc., 1979.
Winn, M. The plug-in drug. New York: Bantam Books, 1977.
Webb, E. J ., Campbell, D. T ., Schwartz, R. D ., & Sechrest, L. Unobtrusive measures: Nonreactive research in the_ social sci ences. Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Company," T966.
Wright, H. Recording and analyzing child behavior. New York: Harper and Row, In c ., 1967! APPENDIX A
INFORMATION PACKET PROVIDED TO DAY CARE CENTERS
291 REQUEST FOR CONDUCTING RESEARCH IN
COLUMBUS DAY CARE CENTERS
T itle :
"Children and Their Communicative
Uses of Television"
Submitted by:
Principle Investigator: Navita Cummings James Department of Communication
Campus Address: 205 Derby Hall The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 43210
Home Address: 2499 Bentham Court East Columbus, Ohio 43219
Telephone: Office: 422-8844 Home: 471-1377
Approved by
Dissertation Committee Chairman ______Dr. Thomas A. McCain 293
T itle : "Children and Their Communicative Uses of Television"
Problem The overall problem addressed in this research is: how do young children in normal settings attend to, perceive, and utilize information learned from television in their everyday interactions. In this research the "natural setting" is the day care center. The natural setting is not to be manipulated by the investigator. It is hoped that this naturalistic research approach will provide information about children and television in a descriptive manner not solely focusing on concepts such as aggression or pro-social learning, but also focusing on all the ways television is viewed and used from the ch ild 's perspective.
Related Research: Previous research on children and television has (11 mostly focused on violence and aggression, (2) been experimental, and (3) been done in labor atory settings or been survey research. Some of the more recent research has (1) focused on pro social learning in addition to violent and aggres sive behavior, and (2) utilized a broader reper to ire of research designs and methods. There has been a call by some children and television re searchers that there is now a strong need for more fie ld research. Concern has also been expressed that there should be greater emphasis on attempting to understand the role of television in the lives of our children from the perspective of the child as opposed to solely from the perspective of an adult. Finally, it has been suggested that lis tening to children explain in their own words what television is all about and observing what child ren appear to ta lk about and use in the everyday play and interactions with others may provide a needed body of information about how television functions in the lives of our children.
Findings in relevant research to date suggest television can be related to aggressive behavior in some children under some conditions on some occasions, and television can be related to pro social learning in some children under some condi tions on some occasions. Some research has sug gested that perhaps the same children who are more prone to learn aggressive behavior from television are also more prone to learn pro-social behavior from television . Other relevant research has 294
suggested that there are several variables which can possibly account fo r the way children use media. One of the most powerful variables appears to be age.
Stemming from this research, then, is the require ment for more field research exploring the broader social and communicative consequences television viewing can have on children in given age groups.
Nature of We expect young children to be frequent viewers of Research: television and to use information learned from television in th e ir ta lk and communicative in te r actions. Because this is exploratory research, no formal hypotheses are offered, but instead a series of research questions are posed:
(1) Under what conditions do children talk about television-related information? to whom do they talk about television related informa tion? (2) When and i f children ta lk about television in natural settings, what do they talk about? how do they talk about it? are there inter actional rules which appear to govern how they ta lk about i t and/or use i t in th e ir play? (3) How do children make sense of things they see on television? What do they see? (4) How do children reports of television be havior compare with parental reports? (5) How do children explain their television viewing behavior and their behaviors when seen on television? What do they see when they see themselves? (6) What is the relationship children describe between television and the "real world"? (7) How do children use television to construct their social realities? What methods or rules appear to be governing how television information is used in children's construc tion of social reality?
Procedure: (1) Sample: Two samples of day care center children 4-5 years old in pre-es tablished classes. Each sample should contain 10 to 20 children. Procedures for assuring parental consent fo r the children's p a rtic i pation are shown in attachment 1. 295
(2) Data Collection: Observation Data. The children will be observed in a variety of situations including (1) while watching tele vision, (2) after watching television, (3) in free play with peers and during guiet conversations with peers, and (4) in interactions with professional s ta ff. Field notes w ill be the p ri mary mechanism fo r data collection . On selected occasions, audio-tapes and/or video-tapes may be utilized. The children's language or talk w ill constitute the primary data.
The Children Interview. The children will be asked a series of questions about th e ir television consumption patterns, role-modeling, self reports on media ta lk , what they see or how they make sense of specific programs they watch on television, preference fo r television and other media and non media activities, parental control and older sibling control of the child's television viewing, etc.
The Parent Interview. The parents will be asked questions about the child's viewing behavior and how the parent would anticipate her/his child would answer many of the same ques tions the children are asked. In ad dition, parental viewing patterns will be discussed. Parent interviews will be done by telephone.
(3) Data Analysis: Observation Data. The observation data will be content analyzed, inter action analyzed, and discourse analyzed. Children Interview Data and Parent In terview Data. All interview data will be content analyzed and the children's data w ill be discourse analyzed. Appropriate frequency counts and cross tabulations will also be used. 296
(4) Time Schedule: We would lik e to begin collecting data as soon as possible. The re searcher would like to spend ten hours observing the children before formal data collection begins. Formal data collection in the day care center should la s t three to fiv e weeks.
(5) Personnel: Personnel working in the day care cen ter will be the principle researcher, and on occasion, an assistant to aid with audio-visual equipment.
(6) Facilities: Facilities required for collection of data will include one room for inter viewing the child subjects.
Reporting and The findings from this study w ill be prim arily Dissemination: disseminated to professional researchers via scholarly journals and professional meetings. Information about the findings will also be made available to the popular press in order to reach parents and to public interest groups and regu lato ry agencies concerned with the relationship children have with television.
Implications Results from this study w ill provide researchers, and Benefits: policy developers, and parents with additional information about the role of television in the lives of our children. This information should help id e n tify what, i f any, measures should be taken or can be taken to enable the child to become a more c ritic a l consumer of televisio n . 297 SAMPLE
April, 1977
Dear Parent,
We a t the Ohio State University Communication Research Center are writing to you and others to ask for your help in a research study we are conducting on the effects of television on young children. To date, much of the research on children and television has taken the children into unnatural settings, e.g., a laboratory to understand the effects of television on them. This current research is to be conducted in situations the children are accustomed to being in in the attempt to better understand the role of television in th e ir everyday lives. The director of the day care center and the profes sional staff have agreed to assist us in this research, and we would like to request your permission for your child to join his or her class mates in participating in it.
In the current study we are focusing on how children select, understand, and use information they have learned from television in their everyday interactions with each other and with adults. It is expected the television programs the child normally watches at home and in the day care center will constitute his or her television diet during the study. In other words, the researchers will not be asking the children to watch programs they do not normally watch and would prefer that parents not change from what the child and family like to watch.
Let me explain in more detail what the project will involve. There are three parts to this study that will involve you and your child: (1) an observation period, (2) children interviews, and (3) parent interviews.
The observation period will be the longest. Here the children w ill do the things they normally do in the day care center—learning exercises, play, watch television, eat, and nap. The researcher will observe what they do, what they ta lk about, and how they ta lk about it. This information will be collected primarily by field notes. On some occasion tape recorders and video cameras might be utilized. This equipment would be used solely fo r the purpose of collecting the exact language the children use in th e ir interactions.
The children interviews will be conducted later in the study. Here each child w ill be asked about his or her television viewing behavior including favorite programs and characters, time of day the child watches programs, what they think happens on programs, etc. These interviews w ill be tape recorded. 298
The parent interviews w ill be conducted around the same time children interviews are being conducted. This w ill involve a te le phone interview during which questions about the child's television viewing behavior and other family members' viewing behavior w ill be asked. These interviews should last approximately 20 minutes.
We do not believe that participation in this research project w ill be harmful or discomforting in any way to your ch ild . We cannot suggest that there will be any direct benefit to you or your child; however, results of th is research w ill increase knowledge about what children learn and use from television and may be of use in helping educate parents to teach children how to use television more con structively and creatively. Also results from this research may help regulatory agencies and public interest groups in making recommenda tions for more effective and beneficial programming for children.
We hope that you will agree to your child joining in this project. Please f i l l out and sign the enclosed form te llin g us whether he or she may participate and whether you are willing to participate, and have your child return this form to his or her teacher at the day care center tomorrow. If you have any questions, please feel free to call us at 422-3400 or 471-1377.
Sincerely,
Navita Cummings James Department of Communication The Ohio State University
Thomas A. McCain Department of Communication The Ohio State University 299
SAMPLE
Participation in this study is COMPLETELY voluntary. All information will be kept completely confidential. You may check either of the first two statements below to either agree or not to agree to your child's participation. You may check either of the last two state ments to either agree or not to agree to your participation in the study. If you agree to participate, please include your home phone number or a number where you can be contacted,,
Please check the appropriate statements below, f ill in your child's name, and sign the form. Have your child return this form to his or her teacher tomorrow or as soon as possible.
Yes, my child ______may participate in the study at his/her day care center.
NO, I would rather my child ______NOT participate in the study.
Yes, I will participate in the study for the parent telephone interview. My home phone number is______.
NO, I would rather NOT participate in the study.
Parent's Signature 300
June 8, 1977
Dear Parent,
This is just a reminder to ask you to please return the permis sion form concerning your child 's participation in the Ohio State University Communication Research Center study on children and television at the day care center.
Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Navita C. James APPENDIX B
CHILDREN'S INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
301 302
QUESTIONS FOR CHILDREN'S INTERVIEW NAME AGE PARENT'S DATE TIME
A. CONSUMPTION
1. Do you watch TV at home? V or N a. How many TV's do you have at home? 1 2 3 4 or more b. Are they color or black and white? BW: 1 2 3 CLR: 12 3 c. In what rooms in your house are your TV's? (1) living room (3) kid's bedroom (5) other ______(2) parent's bedroom (4) kitchen ______d. Do you know i f you have cable television? Y or N
2. When do you watch TV at home? a. In the morning? Y or N I f Y, what do you watch?______Why do you watch TV in the morning? b. In the afternoon? Y or N I f Y, what do you watch?______Why?______c. While you are eating dinner or supper? Y or N What do you watch?______Why?______d. After dinner/supper? Y or N What do you watch?______Why?______e. After dark? Y or N What do you watch?______Why?______
3. Do you watch TV every day? Y or N Why?______What do you watch on Saturday?______Do you watch TV alot? Y or N
4. When you watch TV at home are you usually a. by yourself? c. with brothers/sisters b. with your parents d. other Why?______
5. Who picks the programs you watch on TV? a. you do c. your daddy e. other______b. your mommy d. your brother/sister
6. Are there some times when you are not allowed to watch? Y or N When are these times?______Why? ______Are there some programs you are not allowed to watch? Y or N What are th e y ? ______Why a ren 't you allowed to watch them? 303
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILDREN'S INTERVIEW 2 NAME
7. In what room in your house do you usually watch TV?______
8. a. I f you could play outside or watch TV which would you rather do? Why?______j______b. If you could play inside or watch tv which would you rather do?______Why? ~ c. I f you could have a story read to you or watch TV, which would you rather do?______Why?______d. Play records or watch TV? ______Why? ______e. Listen to the radio or watch TV? Why?______~ f . Read or watch TV? Why?______
9. Did you watch TV yesterday? Y or N What did you watch?______Do you remember what' i t was about? Y or N
Who was in it?
B. PREFERENCES
1. Do you lik e to watch TV? Y or N Why?______
2. What are your favo rite TV programs? a .______d .______b .______e .______c . ______i f .______What is it that you like about/What are~’they about? a .______b.~~ c . ______(If no cartoons are mentioned ask), What are your favorite cartoons? ______
What do you lik e about them/What are they about?
3. Who are your favorite TV characters? a. b. c. 304
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILDREN'S INTERVIEW 3 NAME
3. (continued)
What do you lik e about them/What do they do? a. b. c . ______
4. What do your parents think about your favorite programs and characters?
Do they ever watch your favorite programs with you? Y or N Would you want them to? Y or N Why?______
5. What is a commercial? ______a. Do you lik e commercials? Y or N Why?______b. Do you have any favo rite commercials? Y or N What are they?______About?______
6. Do you lik e to watch scary TV programs? Y or N Why or why n o t?______What are scary TV programs about?
C. COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR AND PLAY
1. Do you ever "play" things that you see on TV? Y or N ( I f yes) What things do you play?______
How do you play?
Why?______
2. Do you ever pretend you are someone you see on TV? Y or N Who do you pretend you are?______Why do you pretend you are?______
3. Do you know how to play a. Batman and Robin i . The Bionic Woman b. Wonder Woman j - Donnie and Marie c. Captain Marvel and Isis k. King Kong d. Star Trek 1 . Mickey Mouse e. Starsky and Hutch m. Scooby Doo f. Emergency/Ramparts n. Bugs Bunny g- Tarzan 0 . Sesame Street h. The Six Million Dollar Man P- C harlie's Angels q. Other (If yes) How do you play/Do you ever play? 305
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILDREN'S INTERVIEW 4 NAME______
C. COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR AND PLAY (continued)
4. If you could play (a) or (b), which would you rather play? Why? a. b. Why? Donnie & Marie House Store Captain Marvel & Isis Cowboys and Indians Batman and Robin Doctor Ramparts/Emergency T ra ffic Cop Starsky and Hutch
5. Do you ever talk to your parents about things you see on TV? Y or N What do you ta lk abo ut?______Do you ever ask them questions about things you see on TV? Y or N What do you ask?______
6. Do the people on TV ever talk to you? Y or N What do they say?______Do you answer the TV when i t asks you questions? Y or N Why?______Do you ever talk to the people you see on TV? Y or N What do you say?______Why do you ta lk to them?______
7. If you were playing and another kid called you stupid, what would you do?______Why?______I f yo~u were playing and another kid hit you, what would you do?______Why?______
8. What would your favorite non-cartoon character do if someone called him/her stupid? ______What would your favorite non-cartoon character do if someone h it her/him? Why?______
9. Do you have any TV toys at home/toys about people and things on TV?
D. PERCEIVED REALITY
1. a. What is TV?______b. What is a cartoon?___ c. What are movies? ____ d. What are commercials? e. What is the news? 306
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILDREN'S INTERVIEW 5 NAME______
D. PERCEIVED REALITY (continued)
2. What kinds of things do you learn from television?
from Sesame Street? from Mickey Mouse?______from commercials? ______
3. Are there good guys and bad guys on TV? Y or N Who are the good guys?______What do they do?______Who are the bad guys?______What do they do?______
4. Where do the people on TV come from? ______
Where do they go when they are not on TV? (the TV is o ff)
5. How do people get to be on TV?
6. Are the kids you see on TV like you and your friends? Y or N Why or why not?______
7. Are the people on TV your friends? Y or N Some of the people? Y or N Who are they?______How do you know they are your friends?
Is real or pretend? How do you know? a. Mickey Mouse R P b. Starsky and Hutch R P c. Wonder Woman R P d. Batman and Robin R P e. Scooby Doo R P f . Steve Austin R P 9- Donnie and Marie R P h. Captain Marvel and Isis R P i . Other R P
9. What's real on TV? What's pretend? ' 307 QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILDREN'S INTERVIEW 6 NAME______
D. PERCEIVED REALITY (continued)
9. (continued)
Are cartoons real or pretend? R P How do you know?____
Are commercials real or pretend? R P How do you know?
Are movies (on TV) real or pretend? R P How do you know?
Are muppets real or pretend? R P How do you know?
Can they (muppets) ride bicycles lik e kids? Y or N
10. Are people and animals real or pretend in cartoons? R P How do you know?______
11. Is everything on TV real? Y or No
12. What's the difference between cartoons and movies on TV?
13. Would you lik e to be on TV? Y or N Why?
14. I f you could be any kid on TV, who would i t be? Why?______;
15. I f you could grow up to be lik e anybody on TV, who would i t be?______Why?______
E. COMPREHENSION AND UNDERSTANDING
1. What program are we watching? a. Sesame Street (1) Segment I (2) Segment I I (3) Segment I I I b. Mickey Mouse (1) Segment I (2) Segment I I (3) Segment I I I c. Scooby Doo (1) Segment I (2) Segment I I (3) Segment I I I QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILDREN'S INTERVIEW 7 NAME
E. COMPREHENSION AND UNDERSTANDING (continued)
2. Can you te ll me what you ju s t saw happen? a. Sesame Street (1) Segment I (2) Segment I I (3) Segment I I I b. Mickey Mouse (1) Segment I (2) Segment I I (3) Segment I I I c . Scooby Doo (1) Segment I (2) Segment I I (3) Segment I I I
3. Other
OTHER QUESTIONS ASKED: APPENDIX C
PARENT INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
309 310
(PARENT WHO SIGNED PERMISSION FORM )
PARENT QUESTIONNAIRE
PARENT'S NAME______M F PHONE NUMBER
CHILD'S NAME BIRTHDATE
QUESTIONS:
1. How many TV's do you have in your home? 1 2 3 4 or more a. How many are black and white? 1 2 3 4 or more b. How many are color? 1 2 3 4 or more c. Do you have cable television? Y N DK d. In what rooms in your house are your TV's? (1) living room (3) kid's bedroom (5) family room (2) parent's bedroom (4) kitchen (6) other ______
2. How often would you say (your child) watches TV on weekday mornings? a. fiv e days a week d. less than once a week b. three or more days a week e. never (skip to 3) c. once a week
Can you te ll me the names of the programs s/he watches? Y N DK
3. How often would you say (your ch ild ) watches TV on weekday afternoons? a. fiv e days a week d. less than once a week b. three or more days a week e. never (skip to 4) c. once a week
Can you te ll me the names of the programs s/he watches at this time? Y N DK ______
4. How often would you say (your child) watches TV while eating dinner? a. d a ily , 5 or more days a week d. less than once a week b. three or more days a week e. never (skip to 5) c. once a week
Can you te ll me the names of the programs s/he watches a t this time? Y N DK 311
PARENT QUESTIONNAIRE 2
PARENT'S NAME
CHILD'S NAME
5. How often would you say (your child) watches TV a fte r dinner in the evening? a. d a ily , 5 or more days a week d. less than once a week b. three or more days a week e. never (skip to 6) c. once a week
Can you t e ll me the names of the programs s/he watches at this time? Y N DK
6. Would you say (your child) watches TV every day? Y N DK
7. Does (your child) watch TV on weekends during the day? Y N DK I f yes, can you t e ll me the names of the programs s/he watches? Y N DK______
8. How many hours a week would you say (your child) watches TV?__
9. Does (your child) usually watch TV a. by him/herself c. with brother/sister(s) b. with a parent M F d. everybody e. other______
10. Who selects the programs (your child) watches on TV? a. the child c. the father b. the mother d. a brother/sister e. other______
11. Are there some programs that you do not allow (your child) to watch? Y N DK I f yes, what are these programs?______
Why is s/he not allowed to watch this/these programs? ~~
12. What would you say are (your c h ild 's ) favo rite TV programs? DK a. 37 312
PARENT QUESTIONNAIRE 3
PARENT'S NAME
CHILD'S NAME ______
13. Who would you say are (your child's) favorite TV characters? DK a .______d.______b .______e.______c . ______
Why do you think ______is a favorite character? DK
14. What do you think about your child 's favo rite programs? DK
No-yes How often do you watch your child's favo rite program with the child? Program Always Sometimes Rarely Never a X X X X b X X X X c X X X X d X X X X e X X X X
15. Does (your child) ever play games involving people or events s/he has seen or learned from TV? Y N DK I f yes, what programs does s/he play about? DK
Can you describe how s/he plays it?
16. Does (your child) ever pretend that s/he is someone on TV? Y N DK i? yes, who______
17. Have you ever seen or heard (your child) play any of the fol lowing games? (c irc le i f yes) a. Batman and Robin 9- Tarzan b. Wonder Woman h. The Six M illio n Dollar Man c. Captain Marvel and Isis i . The Bionic Woman d. Star Trek j - Donnie and Marie e. Starsky and Hutch k. King Kong f . Emergency/Ramparts 1. Mickey Mouse m. Other 313 PARENT QUESTIONNAIRE 4
PARENT'S NAME
CHILD'S NAME
18. How often would you say (your child) talks to you about things s/he sees on TV? a. daily d. less than once a week b. several times a week e. never (skip to 19) c. once a week What does s/he ta lk about? DK ______
19. Does (your child) have any clothes or shoes with TV characters on them? Y N DK If yes, can you describe the articles? Y N DK______
Do you know if (your child) requested that the item be bought (or did the parent decide to purchase it without the child requesting or was it a gift?) a. child requested b. parent decision without child c. gift or other
20. Does (your child) have any TV games or any other toys related to TV programs and characters? Y N DK I f yes, can you describe these games or toys? Y N DK
21. Would you say (your child) learns thinqs from watchinq TV? Y N DK I f yes, what?______
22. Would you say TV a. in general is good for children to watch and it has positive effects on them b. in general is bad for children and has negative effects on them c. has more positive than negative effects on kids d. has more negative than positive effects on kids e. has no effects on kids f . DK/NA Why?______314
PARENT QUESTIONNAIRE 5
PARENT'S NAME______
CHILD'S NAME ______
And now I'd lik e to ask you some questions about you and your fam ily.
23. How many hours a day do you watch TV? Or how much TV do you watch? a. one hour or less b. two-three hours c. four to five hours d. six or more hours e. DK/NA How many of these hours are your fa v o r.'e programs?______
24. How many children live at home besides ______? 1 2 3 4 or more.
25. Does the child live with both parents or a single parent? B S
26. What was the la s t level of education you completed? a. less than high school b. high school c. one year or more of college d. graduate of college e. post graduate work/degree
27. How old are you?______
OTHER QUESTIONS/COMMENTS: APPENDIX D
TEACHER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
315 316 TEACHER INTERVIEW PART I
PERSONAL DATA
1. Name______2. Phone number______3. How long have you worked at the center? ______4. What age groups have you worked with?______How long? 5. How many children do you have of your own?_ What are their ages? ______6. How old are you?______
CHILDREN'S PLAY AND COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR
1. What are the games or things you see the children playing on the playground?
2. What are the games or things you see the children playing in the big room?
3. What differences, if any, are there between the winter and summer play of the children?
4. What are the TV games you have seen the kids playing? How did they play them? Who usually plays them?
5. Which TV programs or characters have you heard the kids talk about? What did they say about them? Who was talking? Who were they talking with/to? Where were they talking?
TELEVISION CONSUMPTION
6. Which children seem to like to watch television the most? Why did you pick them?
7. Which children seem to like to watch television the least? Why did you pick them?
8. What, if any, difference is there between interest in TV watching during the winter as compared to the summer? 317 TEACHER INTERVIEW PART I (continued)
TEACHER'S NAME
9. Which teachers have most frequently watched TV with the children during the past nine months?
10. Which children are the most physically aggressive?
TEACHER INTERVIEW PART I I
CHILD'S NAME______
PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS IN REFERENCE TO THE CHILD ABOVE.
TELEVISION-RELATED PLAY AND COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR
Do you remember ever seeing the child above play (P) or talk about (T) the following programs? (Please circle the appropriate X for yes, no, not sure. If you circle yes or not sure, please also circle P or T for play or talk.)
TV Program Yes No Not Sure Play/Talk Comment 1. Batman and Robin X ~T X P T 2. Wonder Woman X X X P T 3. Captain Marvel/Isis X X X P T 4. Star Trek X X X P T 5. Starsky and Hutch X X X P T 6. Emergency X X X P T 7. Tarzan X X X P T 8. Bionic Man/Woman X X X P T 9. Donnie and Marie X X X P T 10. Mickey Mouse X X X P T 11. Other X X X P T
Any additional comments you may have about this child's television- related play or talk, please put on the other side of this paper. 318
TEACHER INTERVIEW PART I I (continued)
TEACHER'S NAME CHILD'S NAME
DURING TELEVISION VIEWING BEHAVIOR
While watching TV the above child (please circle the appropriate response): Some- Always Often times Rarely Never DK/NA 1. stays in the room for the entire program X X X X X 2. changes seats X X X X X 3. sits with a teacher X X X X X 4. sucks thumb X X X X X 5. has to be told to be quiet X X X X X 6. sings along with the TV X X X X X 7. repeats "sounds" heard on TV, e .g ., noises in commercials X X X X X 8. repeats verbal phrases and numbers heard on TV X X X X X 9. says s/he has or wants something seen on TV X X X X X 10. says s/he has been or is going to someplace seen on TV X X X X X 11. says s/he is somebody else seen on TV X X X X X 12. talks to other kids X X X X X
13. talks to adults X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 14. asks questions about the program X X X X X X 15. does other things, e.g., looking at a book, etc. X X X X X X 16. answers questions asked by TV X X X X X X 17. explains what happens on TV X X X X X X
Any additional comments about the ch ild 's during TV viewing behavior, please put on the other side of this paper. Thank you. APPENDIX E
SAMPLE INTERVIEW AND OBSERVATION
DATA FORM ON TV-BASED GAMES
319 Female Male name/age child parent teacher obser. name/age child parent teacher obser.
Marcie (3)
Mitch (4) Kay (4) Chip (4)
Alan (4)
Donnie (4) Holly (5) Bobby (5) J ill (5)
Melissa (6) Chuckie (6)
Female Descriptions: (4 sources) Male Descriptions: (4 sources) Age 3 Age 4 Age 5 Age 6
Figure 3. Interview and observation data analysis form. (Based on question "Have you seen or observed this child play "Batman"? Responses = yes, no, not sure. Chart size 12" x 18".) APPENDIX F
CHILDREN'S CONSUMPTION DATA
321 322
SUMMARY OF CONSUMPTION DATA Child Reports Parent Reports 1. Homes with television 11 11 a. with color TV 3 8 b.with cable TV 9 5
2. Children's daily viewing a. every day 11 (yes) 10 (yes-winter) 7/ (yes-summer) b. morning 10 (yes) 6 (yes) c. a fte r oon 10 (yes) 7 (yes) d. during dinner 7 (yes) 9 (yes) e. after dinner/after dark 11 (yes) 11 (yes)
3. Who child watches TV with a. by himself/herself 8 8 b. with parent 4 11 c. with siblings 2 5
4. Who selects child's programs a. chi Id 7 5 b. parents 8 10 c. sibling 1 1
5. Are there programs and/or
allowed to watch TV? 3 (yes) 6 (yes)
6 . Hours of television Winter Summer Total viewing per week a. parent's average 18.4 15.6 17.0 b. children's average 21.7 13.5 17.6 c. boys' average 19.5 12.8 16.1 d. g irls ' average 24.4 12.2 18.3 e. 3 and 4 year olds 17.7 9.3 13.5 f. 5 and 6 year olds 26.6 16.4 21.5
7. The children's ten most frequently watched programs (parent reports) Number of Parents Reporting a. cartoons 11 b. Donnie and Marie 6 c. Mickey Mouse 6 d. Andy Griffith 6 e. Star Trek 5 f . Sesame Street 4 g. Waltons 3 h. Laverne and Shirley 3 i . Happy Days 3 j . Wi1d Ki ngdom 3 APPENDIX G
CHILDREN'S PREFERENCES DATA
323 324
TABLE 2
CHILDREN'S FAVORITE PROGRAMS BY PROGRAM TITLES
Program T itle s Programs reported Programs reported by two or more by two or more children (n = 9)a parents (n = 11 )b
Bugs Bunny 4 2
L ittle Rascals 2 -
Mickey Mouse 2 5
Scooby Doo 2 1
Sesame Street - 5
Starsky and Hutch - 4
Batman - 3
Donnie and Marie - 3
Happy Days - 3
Wild Kingdom - 3
The Muppets - 3
Emergency - 2
E lectric Company - 2
Wonder Woman - 2
Welcome Back Kotter - 2
aTotal number of different program titles reported for children's favorite programs by child reports were: n = 27.
bTotal number of different program titles reported for children's favorite programs by parent reports were: n = 45. TABLE 3
NUMBER OF FAVORITE TELEVISION PROGRAMS BY PROGRAM CATEGORIES
Program Age Sex Totals Category ------—------3 & 4 year olds 5 & 5 year olds Boys G irls
Child Parent Child Parent Child Parent Child Parent Child Parent Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports
Cartoons 7 7 10 8 7 11 10 4 17 15
Children's Non-Cartoon Programs 7 7 0 8 5 9 2 6 7 15
Situation Comedy 3 8 1 3 0 5 4 6 4 11
Adult Action- Adventure 0 10 1 3 1 9 0 4 1 13
Variety 0 2 0 1 0 1 0 2 0 3
Other 1 5 3 10 3 8 1 7 4 15 325 326
TABLE 4
PERCENTAGES OF CHILDREN'S PREFERENCES FOR
DIFFERENT PROGRAM CATEGORIES3
Programs Children's Reports*3 Parents' Reports*3
Cartoons 48% 24%
Children's Non- Cartoon Programs 22% 14%
Adult Action- Adventure 4% 22%
Situation Comedies 15% 20%
General 11% 20%
aOnly programs reported by specific titles included.
^Based on number of d iffere n t program title s reported. 327
TABLE 5
CHILDREN'S FAVORITE TELEVISION CHARACTERS
Characters' Names Characters reported Characters reported by two or more by two pr more children3 parentsb
No favorite 4C -
Scooby Doo 2 -
Marie (Osmond) - 4
Donnie (Osmond) - 3
Mickey Mouse - 3
Fonzie - 3
Steve Austin/Lee Majors - 2
Batman - 2
Robin - 2
Mouseketeers - 2
Emergency stars - 2
aThe total number of characters identified as children's favorite characters by child reports were: n = 14.
^The total number of characters identified as children's favorite characters by parent reports were: n = 28, plus the "Peanuts Gang," and cast from Mash and Welcome Back Kotter.
cThese children were three and four years old. TABLE 6
NUMBER OF FAVORITE TELEVISION CHARACTERS BY PROGRAM CATEGORIES
Program Age Sex Totals Category 3 & 4 year olds 5 & 6 year olds Boys Girls
Child Parent Child Parent Child Parent Child Parent Child Parent Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports Reports
Cartoons 1 5 11 4 2 6 10 3 12 9
Children's Non-Cartoon Programs 1 5 0 2 1 5 0 2 1 7
Situation Comedy 0 12 0 3 0 5 0 10 0 15
Adult Action Adventure 1 3 0 7 1 3 0 7 1 10
Variety 0 3 0 4 0 1 0 6 0 7
Other 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0
CO ro Co