Suburban Preschool Children's Comprehension of an Age-appropriate Informational Television Program

FRIEDLANDER, BERNARD Z.; WETSTONE, HARRrET S.; and ScoTrr, CHRImuSTOPHER S. Suburban Preschool Children's Comprehension of an Age-appropriate Informational Television Program. CmLD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 561-565. Preschoolers' comprehension of a 3-minute ageappropriate informational television program was measured with a standard evaluation procedure. More than half of the 31 children demonstrated comprehension of less than half of the tested information. Analysis of the data indicated that the children did comprehend the general flow of ongoing activity but demonstrated poor comprehension of statements of fact related to the central theme, of rapidly presented verbal/visual asides, and of elements presented either in visual or verbal modality alone. Failures in comprehension were attributed more to programming strategies than to children's cognitive limitations.