Poster #238 - Behavioral and Physiological Effects of Child- and Adult-Directed Television During Young Children’s Play

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Technology, Media & Child Development

Integrative Statement

Understanding the impact of media on young children requires understanding how children respond to media in real time during everyday activities. Young children often play in the presence of background TV (Masur & Flynn, 2008; Masur et al., 2015; Schmitt et al., 2003), and they frequently shift their attention between play and TV (Richards & Anderson, 2004). However, different types of TV content may have different effects on children’s attention and play (Richards & Anderson, 2004; Schmidt et al., 2008; Setliff & Courage, 2011). We utilized behavioral and psychophysiological measures to examine how children play in the presence of child- versus adult-directed TV.

In a repeated-measures design, children (N=21, 3-5 years, 48% girls) played with toys in a comfortably furnished room during a 5-minute baseline period and three randomly ordered 8-minute segments of child-directed TV, adult-directed TV, and no TV. Meanwhile, participants wore an Empatica E4 wristband to record movement (accelerometry), arousal (skin conductance), and cognitive engagement (heartrate deceleration). The sessions were video-recorded for subsequent coding of attention to TV and toys. Parents completed the CAFÉ survey and time-use diary, which collects detailed information about family and child characteristics and the content and context of media use.

Table 1 shows correlations between parent-report, behavioral, and physiological variables of interest. In general, older children had slower heart rates (i.e., higher inter-beat interval), and they spent more time than younger children looking at the adult-directed program. Moreover, children’s exposure to TV at home was negatively correlated with their attention to the adult-directed program in the lab.

Figure 1 shows average attention to TV and physiological measures for each condition. There were significant effects of condition on attention to TV [F(2,40) = 145.99, p < .001], heart rate as measured by inter-beat interval [F(2,40) = 19.49, p < .001], and movement as measured by accelerometry [F(2,40) = 11.79, p < .001]. As predicted, children spent more time looking at child-directed than adult-directed TV (90% vs. 40%) [t(20) = 8.70, p < .001]. Additionally, during child-directed (vs. adult-directed) TV, children had slower heart rates [t(20) =3.36, p = .003] and less physical movement [t(20) = 3.39, p = .003]. Finally, children’s heart rates were slower during adult-directed TV than no TV [t(18) = 3.06, p = .007], although the amount of physical movement did not differ between these conditions [t(20) = 1.31, p = .207].

These findings replicate previous research insofar as children spent more time attending to a child-directed (and likely more comprehensible) program. However, children’s attention to the adult-directed program increased with age and with lower exposure to TV at home. Perhaps children with high TV exposure at home are better able to identify (and thus ignore) TV programs for older audiences, while older children may be better able to comprehend these programs. Children’s decelerated heart rate during TV, especially child-directed TV, may reflect increased cognitive engagement in service of comprehending the program. Together, findings from this study underscore the importance of considering child characteristics and media content to understand media effects.

Group Authors

CAFÉ Consortium Key Investigators

Authors

• Heather Kirkorian, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author

• Seung Heon Yoo, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Roxanne Etta, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Skora Horgan, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rachel Barr, Georgetown University
  Non-Presenting Author