Children’s Acceptance of Television Advertising and the Relation of Televiewing to School Achievement

THE PRESENT study was designed to assess I some of the learning outcomes resulting from the relatively large number of hours children spend j watching television. Considerable attention has I been directed toward television program content (1, 3) ; however, to this writer's knowledge, no one has made any attempt to study the commer cial portion of television programming. This ap pears to be an important oversight when one notes the attention children pay to the very common animated commercial. I Specifically, the study attempted to show how children differ in their knowledge and understand? ing of the commercial on their favorite programs, their acceptance, as fact, of the argument of the commercial, and their use or desire to use the advertised product. These reactions also were rej lated to intelligence, socioeconomic status, school I achievement, and amount of television viewing.