69-15957 SANDERS, James Taggart, 1935- a DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY of PREFERENCES for TELEVISION CARTOONS. the Ohio State University
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This dissertation has been 69-15,957 microfilmed exactly as received SANDERS, James Taggart, 1935- A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF PREFERENCES FOR TELEVISION CARTOONS. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1969 Psychology, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OP PBEFEBENCES FOE TELEVISION CARTOONS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By James Taggart Sanders, A.B., M.A. #*###* The Ohio State University 1969 Approved by Adviser Department of Psychology ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I should like to thank my adviser, Dr. John Horrocks, whose patience and support endured the sternest tests that any graduate student could devise. I am very grate ful. I should also like to thank my good friend, Dr. Steven Buma, who suggested the basic Idea of this study, although he bears no responsibility for any of the de fects in its elaboration. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the very considerable contributions of two of my Canadian colleagues, Drs. S, H. Irvine and A. G. Slemon. Their continuous encouragement and help are greatly appreciated. 11 VITA February 12 1935 Born - Canton, Ohio 1957 . • • III A.B., Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1963-196A • t • • Teaching Assistant, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio I96A . M*A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1964-1966 • . « Assistant Instructor, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1967-1969 • • , • Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology and Sociology, Althouse College of Education, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada TABLE OP CONTENTS Chapter Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................... 11 VITA .............................................. Ill LIST OF T A B L E S ................................... V I INTRODUCTION.............................. 1 II CHILDREN AND TELEVISION..................... 7 III M E T H O D ...................................... 16 IV RESULTS...................................... 27 V DISCUSSION................................ VI SUMMARY............. '........................ 5k APPENDIXES A CARTOON CARDS.................................57 B PREFERENCE RECORD F O R M ....................... 68 C INTERCORRELATION MATRIX . * ................. 70 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................... 72 i lv LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1 CHRONOLOGICAL-AGE MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS BY GRADE AND S E X ............... 17 2 SATURDAY MORNING TELEVISION L O G ............. 18 3 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE i ALL CARTOONS ...... 27 4 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCEi 9i00 A.M. CARTOONS . 29 5 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCEi 9*30 A.M. CARTOONS . 29 6 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCEi lOlOO A.M. CARTOONS . 30 7 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE! 10*30 A.M. CARTOONS . 30 8 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE! 11*00 A.M. CARTOONS . 31 9 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE* 11*30 A.M. CARTOONS . 31 10 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE* 12*00 P.M. CARTOONS . 32 11 MEAN PREFERENCE BANKS BY SEX AND CARTOON . 33 12 ^COEFFICIENTS OF CONCORDANCE (W) * MALES .... 35 13 COEFFICIENTS OF CONCORDANCE (W) * FEMALES . 36 14 MOST PREFERRED CARTOONS BY SEX AND TIME .... 39 15 INTERCORRELATIONS BETWEEN CARTOONS MOST PREFERRED BY M A L E S ................... 40 16 INTERCORRELATIONS BETWEEN CARTOONS MOST PREFERRED BY FEMALES................. 41 17 CHI-SQUARE ANALYSES OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN IDENTIFICATION CHOICE AND MOST PREFERRED CARTOON • 43 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION •••A pause in the day*s occupations That is known as the Children's Hour Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The broad purpose of the present study was to investi gate the viewing preferences of kindergarten and elementary school pupils for a popular variety of children's tele- vision entertainment — the animated cartoon. To this end* an attempt was made to determine age-grade trends and sex differences in children's preferences for a representative sampling of this television program category. A further purpose of this investigation was to explore the children's reasons for their preferences, as well as their expressed perceptions of and attitudes toward selected cartoons and cartoon characters. This was accomplished by means of a semi-structured, free-response interview. In recent years, the animated cartoon has come to rep resent the chief staple of American television entertain ment programming that is intended more or less exclusively for juvenile consumption. All three of the major, commer cial television networks (viz., ABC, CBS, and NBC) currently telecast a large number of animated cartoon series, of which the majority are shown during Saturday morning. For example, at the time the present study was conducted, the program log for the three, local, network- affiliated television stations Indicated that approximate ly five consecutive hours of every Saturday morning (from ?i30 a.m. until 12i30 p.m.) were almost exclusively de voted to this type of children's entertainment program. In addition, It has been recently estimated that these cartoons regularly attract an audience of approximately 30 million children (Globe and Mall. Nov. 15* 1967). Clear ly, a vast number of children spend a considerable amount of time watching a large assortment of cartoons on tele vision. Apart from the fact that "children's television enter tainment" has become largely equivalent in meaning to ani mated cartoons, an equally Interesting circumstance associ ated with this entertainment is that the majority of these cartoon programs are telecast at essentially the same time, i.e.. Saturday morning, by all of the networks and in di rect viewer competition with one another. The somewhat pe culiar result of these programming and scheduling practices Is that the child viewer is provided with an unusually con centrated surfeit of homogeneous entertainment from which choice on the basis of program category has been virtually excluded* Prom the point of view of the present study* these twin circumstances of (1) en bloc scheduling and (2) pro gram uniformity appeared to provide a natural analogue to the more controlled psychological preference paradigm in volving (1) the simultaneous presentation of (2) similar stimuli or preference objects. As a result, it was large ly for these reasons, therefore, that preference was se lected as the primary datum of interest in this investi gation. In other words, recognizing that this domain of children's television entertainment imposes somewhat unique limitations (or controls) upon viewing choice, it was deemed of first importance to determine simply what cartoons children choose or prefer to watch. The general psychological model of preference, which suggests, for example, that important individual or devel opmental differences may be inferred from differential preference behavior, includes implicitly two methodologi cal provisions governing the determination of preferences that may be broadly described as (1) stimulus control and (2) response autonomy. That is, the psychological mean ing or interpretation of preferences is to a large extent dependent upon (1) a systematic description and presenta tion of the class of preference objects (stimulus control), as well as (2) the Identification and elimination of arbi trary and irrelevant restrictions upon preferential choice (response autonomy)* As suggested, the uninterrupted and competitive pro gramming of animated cartoons on Saturday morning simulates to some extent the simultaneous, comparative presentation of a more or less well-defined class of preference objects* And to this extent, the preference domain under considera tion reflects the kind of stimulus control implied by the general model* Similarly, there are a number of factors associated with this preference behavior that would appear to promote a significant degree of response autonomy. In particular, the television cartoons, as home-based and virtually cost- free mass-media entertainment, are readily available or accessible to children of widely varying ages* In this sense, children's preferences are less apt to be differen tially determined by such contingencies as expense, trans portation or distribution which very likely affect child ren's exposure to and preferences for other popular enter tainment media, e.g.. motion pictures, comic books, phono graph records, etc* Furthermore, the concurrent and appositlonal program ming of the television cartoons during the Saturday fore noon hours indicates that they do not compete with either the preferred viewing hours or the preferred television programs of adults. This time scheduling is also less likely to conflict with such childhood routines as study hours or bedtime curfews — not to mention the more insti tutionalized demands of school and church attendance. Finally, there is some evidence that the television cartoons are generally regarded favorably by parents and considered appropriate Juvenile entertainment (Globe and Mall. Nov 15, 1967). This would suggest that children's viewing preferences within this program category are less likely to be subject to the kind of parental censorship and control, that may be exercised with respect to other television programming, e.g.. crime drama, television movies, etc. These combined factors were assumed to permit an im portant degree of autonomy or self-determination within children's choice or preference behavior that greatly en hanced the potential psychological projective significance of this behavior. In other words, given the