Eric E. Rasmussen

Does parental mediation of media influence child outcomes? A meta-analysis on media time, aggression, substance use, and sexual behavior.

The current study examined how parental mediation of media (restrictive mediation, active mediation, and coviewing) influenced child outcomes. Three meta-analyses, 1 for each type of mediation, were conducted on a total of 57 studies. Each analysis assessed the effectiveness of parental mediation on 4 pertinent child outcomes: media use, aggression, substance use, and sexual behavior. The overall results indicated small, but significant relationships between child outcomes and restrictive mediation (r+ = -.06), and coviewing (r+ = .09). Overall active mediation was nonsignificant, though active mediation was individually related to lower levels of aggression (r+ = -.08), sexual behavior (r+ = -.06), and substance use (r+ = -.11). This analysis revealed that parents may have the ability to mitigate some of the adverse effects of the media by using certain mediation strategies. Overall, a cooperative effort from the communication and parenting fields is necessary for a comprehensive analysis of parental mediation as well as a disentanglement of the various parental mediation measures. (PsycINFO Database Record

Relation between active mediation, exposure to Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and US preschoolers’ social and emotional development

Abstract This study explored the relationship between active mediation, exposure to Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and key indicators of preschoolers’ social and emotional development. One hundred and twenty-seven children aged 2–6 either watched or did not watch 10 episodes of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood over a two-week period. Results revealed that preschoolers who watched the program exhibited higher levels of empathy, self-efficacy, and emotion recognition when their regular TV-watching experiences are frequently accompanied by active mediation. This was especially true for younger preschoolers and preschoolers from low-income families. Implications for policy-makers, parents, producers of prosocial programming, and educators are discussed.

Restrictive Mediation and Unintended Effects: Serial Multiple Mediation Analysis Explaining the Role of Reactance in US Adolescents

Extant research indicates that restrictive parental mediation, parents enforcing rules limiting children’s media use, produces unintended effects in adolescents. Speculation exists that these suboptimal effects are due to psychological reactance following a restrictive mediation interaction leading the adolescent toward defiant behavior. A survey of undergraduate students (N = 483) was conducted to investigate the process of psychological reactance as a mediating factor in the relationship between restrictive parental mediation and three unintended effects: negative attitude toward parents, positive attitude toward restricted content, and increased viewing of restricted content with friends. Results revealed a direct effect of restrictive mediation on attitude toward parent, but not attitude toward restricted content or viewing restricted content with friends. Moreover, the reactance process fully mediated restrictive mediation’s effect on attitude toward restricted content and viewing restricted content with friends, and partially mediated the effect on attitude toward parents.

The Relation Between Norm Accessibility, Pornography Use, and Parental Mediation Among Emerging Adults

Widespread access to and use of pornography has led to concern about the potentially negative effects of exposure to pornography on emerging adults—its largest user group. Past research shows that salient social norms can influence subsequent behavior. This study, therefore, explored the relationship between salient pornography-related norms and pornography use among emerging adults, as well as the relationship between parental mediation of pornography during adolescence and emerging adults’ salient pornography-related norms. Results revealed that emerging adults are more likely to view pornography when they hold a salient belief (norm) that their peers both approve of viewing and regularly view pornography. The study also found that parents’ provision of rules about viewing pornography during adolescence may reduce future pornography use by instilling the salient belief that the parent disapproves of viewing pornography. These findings suggest that the effect of rules in the home about adolescents’ use of pornography may persist into emerging adulthood.

Dr. Phil and Psychology Today as self-help treatments of mental illness: A content analysis of popular psychology programming

Many people with a diagnosable mental illness do not receive professional treatment. Instead, they may turn to media mental health professionals for diagnosis and treatment recommendations. This study content analyzed episodes of Dr. Phil and issues of Psychology Today to determine what mental disorders are covered and treatments are recommended, and to determine whether their coverage of mental disorders corresponds to the national prevalence of mental disorders. Both sources provide content about depression more than about any other mental illness. Both also make recommendations for psychotherapy more than they recommend other forms of treatment. The study also found no relation between the proportion of times that mental disorders were discussed and the prevalence of the disorders among American adults. This research helps to lay a foundation for future research addressing the relations among mental disorders, self-treatment, and the medias role in mental health.

Explaining parental coviewing: The role of social facilitation and arousal

ABSTRACT This study explores the relationship between parental coviewing and children’s psychophysiological responses to television exposure within a framework of social facilitation. A total of 88 children aged 6–13 years and one of each of their parents participated in a 2 (presence or absence of the parent) × 2 (exciting or non-exciting TV content) between-subjects experiment. Results indicated that the presence of a coviewing parent was associated with an increase in children’s arousal (higher skin conductance levels) and cognitive resource allocation (lower heart rate), especially for younger children who came from homes where parental coviewing was a relatively frequent activity. These findings suggest that the mere presence of a coviewing parent is sufficient to alter children’s processing of television messages.

Treatment via Television: The Relation Between Watching Dr. Phil and Viewers’ Intentions to Seek Mental Health Treatment

Many people with a mental disorder fail to obtain professional treatment for a diagnosable mental disorder, and some turn to media outlets for diagnosis and treatment recommendations; however, little is known about outcomes associated with exposure to media mental health professionals. We reasoned that exposure to Dr. Phil would be associated with greater intentions to seek mental health treatment for oneself and for one’s child and that this relationship would be serially mediated by higher levels of parasocial relationship with Dr. Phil and greater efficacy beliefs in treating the mental illness of oneself and one’s child. As predicted, frequent viewing of Dr. Phil was associated with higher levels of parasocial relationship with Dr. Phil, which in turn was itself associated with greater efficacy beliefs in treating a mental illness of oneself and of one’s child, which was ultimately related to greater intentions to seek treatment for oneself or for one’s child. The findings suggest that the relationship that develops between media mental health professionals and their audience can encourage intentions to seek mental health treatment.

Theoretical Underpinnings of Reducing the Media’s Negative Effect on Children: Person-Centered, Negatively-Valenced Evaluative Mediation within a Persuasion Framework

While the extant research in the field of parental mediation provides ample evidence that parent-child conversations influence children’s reactions to the media, little research provides theoretical explanations for the ability of these conversations to benefit children. In response to this paucity of theory-based explanation, this chapter situates active mediation within a framework of individual-differences persuasion, develops the conceptualization of active mediation to reflect its persuasive purpose, and shows how such a persuasive framework for active mediation can elucidate the processes at work when parent-child conversations are aimed at thwarting the potentially negative influence of media exposure on children.

Parenting and Digital Media

Understanding the family dynamic surrounding media use is crucial to our understanding of media effects, policy development, and the targeting of individuals and families for interventions to benefit child health and development. The Families, Parenting, and Media Workgroup reviewed the relevant research from the past few decades. We find that child characteristics, the parent-child relationship, parental mediation practices, and parents’ own use of media all can influence children’s media use, their attitudes regarding media, and the effects of media on children. However, gaps remain. First, more research is needed on best practices of parental mediation for both traditional and new media. Ideally, this research will involve large-scale, longitudinal studies that manage children from infancy to adulthood. Second, we need to better understand the relationship between parent media use and child media use and specifically how media may interfere with or strengthen parent-child relationships. Finally, longitudinal research on how developmental processes and individual child characteristics influence the intersection between media and family life is needed. The majority of children’s media use takes place within a wider family dynamic. An understanding of this dynamic is crucial to understanding child media use as a whole.

Evaluating the Ability of the PBS Children’s Show Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood to Teach Skills to Two Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood is a children’s television show incorporating many elements of video modeling, an intervention that can teach skills to children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This study evaluated the impact of watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood episodes on the accurate performance of trying new foods and stopping play politely with two five-year-old children with ASD. Both children showed improved performance of skills only following exposure to episodes of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, suggesting that watching episodes can help children with ASD learn specific skills.