A Capacity Model of Children's Comprehension of Educational Content on Television

Many studies have shown that children of various ages learn from educational television, but they have not explained how children extract and comprehend educational content from these television programs. This paper proposes a model (the capacity model) that focuses on children's allocation of working memory resources while watching television. The model consists of a theoretical construct with three basic components (processing of narrative, processing of educational content, and distance, that is, the degree to which the educational content is integral or tangential to the narrative), plus several governing principles that determine the allocation of resources between narrative and educational content. A review of empirical research points to characteristics of both television programs and viewers that affect the allocation of resources under the model, as well as developmental influences on the relevant processing. Finally, implications for the production of effective educational television are discussed.