Jessica Taylor Piotrowski

Background Television in the Homes of US Children

OBJECTIVE: US parents were surveyed to determine the amount of background television that their children are exposed to as well as to isolate demographic factors associated with increased exposure to background television. After this, we ask how certain home media practices are linked to children’s background television exposure. METHODS: US parents/caregivers (N = 1454) with 1 child between the ages of 8 months and 8 years participated in this study. A nationally representative telephone survey was conducted. Parents were asked to report on their child’s exposure to background television via a 24-hour time diary. Parents were also asked to report relevant home media behaviors related to their child: bedroom television ownership, number of televisions in the home, and how often a television was on in the home. RESULTS: The average US child was exposed to 232.2 minutes of background television on a typical day. With the use of multiple regression analysis, we found that younger children and African American children were exposed to more background television. Leaving the television on while no one is viewing and children’s bedroom television ownership were associated with increased background television exposure. CONCLUSIONS: Although recent research has shown the negative consequences associated with background television, this study provides the first nationally representative estimates of that exposure. The amount of exposure for the average child is startling. This study offers practitioners potential pathways to reduce exposure.

Associations between parenting, media use, cumulative risk, and children’s executive functioning

Objective: This study was designed to examine how parenting style, media exposure, and cumulative risk were associated with executive functioning (EF) during early childhood. Methods: A nationally representative group of US parents/caregivers (N = 1156) with 1 child between 2 and 8 years participated in a telephone survey. Parents were asked to report on their childs exposure to television, music, and book reading through a 24-hour time diary. Parents also reported a host of demographic and parenting variables as well as questions on their childs EF. Results: Separate multiple regressions for preschool (2–5 years) and school-aged (6–8 years) children grouped by cumulative risk were conducted. Parenting style moderated the risks of exposure to background television on EF for high-risk preschool-age children. Educational TV exposure served as a buffer for high-risk school-aged children. Cumulative risk, age, and parenting quality interacted with a number of the exposure effects. Conclusions: The study showed a complex pattern of associations between cumulative risk, parenting, and media exposure with EF during early childhood. Consistent with the American Academy of Pediatrics, these findings support the recommendation that background television should be turned off when a child is in the room and suggest that exposure to high-quality content across multiple media platforms may be beneficial.

Developing Media Interventions to Reduce Household Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption

In 2010, the city of Philadelphia launched a media campaign to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in homes with children as a strategy to combat obesity. Using the integrative model (IM) of behavioral change and prediction, a theory-based precampaign survey of Philadelphia parents was conducted to determine the most effective message content. Results indicated that intention to eliminate SSB consumption is attitudinally driven and suggested that effective messages should highlight feelings of nurturing and concern about child weight gain. Focus group testing led to the selection of a television ad, transit/print ad, and a radio spot that incorporated aspects of the theory-based results from the baseline survey. An online message testing experiment found that exposure to campaign messages increased intention to reduce SSBs and supported the underlying beliefs in the correct direction. These results illustrate how the IM can be applied to the development of a public health intervention.

Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption by Adult Caregivers and Their Children: The Role of Drink Features and Advertising Exposure

Objective. To examine how parents’ beliefs about beverage attributes and exposure to sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) advertising are associated with parents’ and their children’s SSB consumption. Design. Cross-sectional representative telephone survey of Philadelphia parents in households with children between the ages of 3 and 16 years. Participants. Three hundred and seventy-one randomly selected survey respondents. The response rate was 27% using the American Association for Public Opinion Research RR3 formula. Main Outcome Measures. SSB consumption, health ratings of SSBs, exposure to SSB ads, and exposure to anti-SSB public service advertisements. Analysis. Seemingly unrelated regression was used to correct for Type I error and significance levels were set at .05 or less. Results. Assessment of SSB “healthiness” was associated with the increased adult consumption of SSBs for three of the five SSBs and associated with children’s consumption for all four SSBs with child consumption data. For both groups, ratings of SSB sugar and caloric content were not related to consumption. Adult exposure to SSB-specific advertising was related to consumption for three of five SSBs and two of four SSBs consumed by children. Conclusions and Implications. These results suggest that sugar and calories are not relevant to consumption, absent an explicit connection to a healthiness evaluation of SSBs.

Structure and Strategies in Children’s Educational Television: The Roles of Program Type and Learning Strategies in Children’s Learning

Educational TV has been consistently linked to childrens learning. In this research, educational TV characteristics were identified, coded, and tested for their influence on childrens program-specific comprehension and vocabulary outcomes. Study 1 details a content analysis of TV features including a programs macrostructure (i.e., narrative or expository) and learning strategies embedded in the macrostructure that support learning in print-based contexts. In Study 2, regression analyses were used to predict outcomes involving 71 second and third graders (average age=7.63 years). Strategies were categorized as organizing, rehearsing, elaborating, or affective in function. Outcomes were uniformly higher for narrative macrostructures. Strategies used in narratives predicted relatively homogenous relations across outcomes, whereas strategies in expositories predicted quite heterogeneous relations across outcomes.

Assessing the Reliability and Validity of Television and Game Violence Exposure Measures

This study evaluated whether common self-report measures of television and game violence exposure represent reliable and valid measurement tools. Three self-report measures—direct estimates, user-rated favorites, and agency-rated favorites—were assessed in terms of test-retest reliability, criterion validity (their relationship with coded media diaries), and construct validity (their relationship with aggression and gender). A total of 238 adolescents participated in a two-wave survey and completed two media diaries. For game violence, the three self-report measures were reliable and valid. For television violence, only direct estimates achieved test-retest reliability and construct validity. Criterion validity could not be established for the television violence measures because the media diary was not a valid criterion for television violence. Our findings indicate that both direct estimates and favorites are valid measures for game violence, whereas for television violence, only direct estimates are valid. We conclude with a discussion about ways to further improve upon and reconceptualize media violence exposure measurement.

Evaluating the Educational Potential of Health PSAs with Preschoolers

Children learn from a variety of televised programs, including the short public service announcements (PSAs) that air between childrens programs. PSAs are designed to repetitively expose children to important content ranging from the benefits of reading to health-related messages. The purpose of this study was to evaluate 5 PSAs containing health messages for preschoolers (i.e., nutrition, physical activity, and hand washing). Using an experimental framework, we examined childrens ability to learn the messages and transfer that knowledge and apply it in novel situations. Child PSA viewers were able to recall more of the educational content, apply this knowledge to specific choices contained in each message, and transfer this knowledge to novel situations compared with their nonviewing counterparts. Implications are discussed.

Finding orchids in a field of dandelions: understanding children’s differential susceptibility to media effects

Most youth and media researchers do not believe that media affect all youth in the same manner or to the same degree. While most media effects theories reflect this belief, empirical efforts often do not. Rather than conceptualizing individual differences as noise or nuisance variables, we argue that the future of media effects research lies within understanding these differences. To that end, the aim of this article is to help youth and media researchers identify appropriate moderators for study inclusion. We discuss the concept of differential susceptibility, with a particular focus on the differences between orchid and dandelion children, highlighting theoretical and empirical applications of this susceptibility paradigm to media effects research. We believe that a more integrative approach to youth and media research, built on a differential susceptibility paradigm in which moderators are thoughtfully integrated a priori, can provide us with nuanced answers to the complex questions associated with youth and media effects.

Participatory Cues and Program Familiarity Predict Young Children's Learning From Educational Television

The capacity model is designed to predict young childrens learning from educational television. It posits that select program features and individual child characteristics can support this learning either by increasing total working memory allocated to the program or altering the allocation of working memory. In this study, the influence of one such program feature (participatory cues) and one such child characteristic (program familiarity) on educational content comprehension was investigated. A total of 187 American preschool-aged children (M = 4.35 years) were randomly assigned to view one of two versions of Dora the Explorer—one version contained participatory cues (i.e., cues that encourage children to respond to queries during the program) while in the other these cues were omitted. All children completed a program familiarity assessment prior to viewing and completed an educational content assessment post-viewing. There was no significant main effect for participatory cues, although, as expected, program familiarity was positively associated with educational content comprehension. In line with expectations, program familiarity was found to moderate the relationship between participatory cues and educational comprehension—the combination of high program familiarity and the presence of participatory cues led to the greatest educational content comprehension. Implications are discussed.

Extending the lessons of educational television with young American children

As the availability of childrens educational television has increased, initiatives to expand the educational impact of programs have emerged. One such initiative is experiential mediation, a form of mediation in which the viewer physically engages with materials designed to extend the programs educational content. Limited research on the effectiveness of experiential mediation exists. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 138 American children (M = 5.32 years) to evaluate the effectiveness of such mediation with the literacy-based television program Between the Lions. Viewing plus mediation was hypothesized to provide greater support for literacy skills than no viewing or unaided viewing. Further, mediation that incorporated character-branded materials was hypothesized to be superior to mediation that relied upon generic materials. Results suggest that the benefits of experiential mediation may be tied to (1) the connection between the mediation materials and television content and (2) the complexity of the educational content.