Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Influence Of Adult- Versus Child-Directed Television Programs On Distractibility In Preschoolers, Kathryn Joyce O'Toole

Master's Theses

Research in the field on children's attention to television has suggested that discerning between two different types of programming is crucial for understanding how children attend to TV. Child-directed television consists of programs designed with the purpose that children are the intended viewers. In contrast, adult-directed television is not designed for children; these programs are directed toward an older audience. The current study investigated how children divided their attention between cognitive tasks and a distractor. The distractor was either an adult-directed TV program, a child-directed TV program, or there was no distractor. The results revealed that the both distractors reduced …