Watching Television in a Home Environment: Effect on Children’s Attention, Comprehension and Behavior

Rose, Sarah E., Dr, Alexandra Lamont, and Nicholas Reyland. 2019. “Watching Television in a Home Environment: Effect on Children’s Attention, Comprehension and Behavior.” PsyArXiv. August 19. doi:10.31234/osf.io/8yma9

Abstract: Correlational studies have suggested some harmful effects of television (TV) viewing in early childhood, especially for the viewing of fast-paced entertainment programs. However, this has not been consistently supported by experimental studies, many of which have lacked ecological validity.  The current study explores the effects of pace of program on the attention, problem solving and comprehension of 41 3- and 4-year-olds using an ecologically valid experimental design.  Children were visited twice at home; on each visit they were shown an episode of a popular animated entertainment program which differed in pace: one faster paced, one slower paced. Children’s behavior was coded for attention and arousal during viewing, attention, effort and performance after viewing during a problem-solving task, and comprehension of the program. The faster paced program was attended to more, but this had no impact on comprehension. Although 3-year-olds showed more attention and effort on the problem-solving task after watching the slower program, both 3- and 4-year-olds completed more problems successfully after watching the faster program.  The results provide evidence to counter the ‘harm’ perceived in young children watching fast-paced entertainment programs as where differences were found it was the fast-paced program which appeared to have a cognitive facilitation effect.