FINAL - 4) Media and Development

Question 1

What are some positive effects of TV?

Answer 1

• goal of Sesame street (Morisett 1966) is to prepare children (at risk – from impoverished families) for school
• helpful for school readiness (especially for low-income family children)
• researchers found that kids who regularly watch sesame street are more ready for school than kids who do not
• Significant, positive impact on cognitive and social-emotional development
• BUT, the more TV they watch, the less well they do in school, a little bit of TV is enough

Question 2

What are some negative effects of TV?

Answer 2

-Prime time TV: 5 acts of violence per hour
-Saturday morning Cartoons: 20-25 acts of violence per hour
-Showing kids that violence is the answer to solving problems
-research investigates:
immediate effects -> tells us little about development
longitudinal effects -> no random assignment therefore no causal statements (no control over study, not ethical)

Question 3

Explain Bandura’s Bobo doll experiments.

Answer 3

-expose children (ages 3-6) to a model who was being violent in his or her interactions with a bobo doll
-child watches model start playing with toys then start punching Bobo doll (gets very agressive)
Results: boys have significantly more imitative aggression when they see model rewarded for that aggression, girls show same pattern except that they are less aggressive overall than boys
- increase in aggression overall when they saw model being rewarded for being aggressive

Question 4

Effect of Power Rangers on aggression in the playground

(Boyatzis et al., 1995). What were the results?

Answer 4

found that children regardless of gender who had seen power rangers engaged in 7 times more aggressive acts on the playground than did children who did not see the show

Question 5

Effect of exposure to violent vs. family movies on aggression (Leyens et al., 1977). Explain the study, what did they find?

Answer 5

• juvenile delinquents
• before they started their study, they took a base line (BL) measure of how many aggressive acts they perform usually, exposed them to family movies every single night for a week or 2 and they counted the amount of aggressive acts they did during that time
• other group of boys watched violent movies
• family movies don’t do anything
• violent movies increase boys aggression

Question 6

Longitudinal effects of TV, explain Eron (1987)’s study on the preference for violent TV at a younger age progressing to a criminal record and aggressiveness later in life.

Answer 6

• found that people TV viewing preferences at age 8 predicted their later aggressiveness and criminal acts at age 30
• low preference for violence TV at age 8: 10-15% with record
• medium preference for violence TV at age 8: 30-35%
• high preference for violence TV at age 8: 50%
• correlations! NOT A CAUSATION
• Found that the best predictor of being aggressive later on in life was not whether you were aggressive at age 8 but it was of whether you liked aggressive TV at this age and how much violent tv you watched at a kid

Question 7

What are some possible mechanisms for agression?

Answer 7

• parenting: Do parents reinforce or counteract the aggression seen on TV?
• Vicarious reinforcement of aggressive responding: internalization of idea that aggression solves problems
• weakened inhibitions against aggressive behaviour: cognitive readiness to aggress, first likely response when frustrated
• Emotional desensitization to violence
• lack of exposure to prosocial behaviour

Question 8

What do video games cause?

Answer 8

• 75% involve violence
• increase in aggression
• increase in anxiety
• decreased ability to tolerate frustration
• increased hostility
• lowered empathy

Question 9

According to the textbook, in a classic early study, Parten identified a developmental sequence of peer interactions that began with nonsocial play. What is this?

Answer 9

-children playing alone or watching others play but not playing with them. Later children progressed to more elaborate forms of play, with each child having a well-defined role.

Question 10

According to the textbook, what are the 3 types of social play?

Answer 10

• parallel play (1yr): youngsters play alone but maintain a keen interest in what others are doing. Exchanges between children begins to occur.
• associative play (15-18mos): engage in similar activities, talk or smile at one another, and offer each other toys. Play is not truly interactive.
• cooperative play (2yr): organize their play around a distinct theme and take on special roles based on the theme. Involves a preference of same sex peers.