Children's Understanding of a Televised Narrative

Abstract

Children at three age levels (5-6, 8-9, and 10-12 years) were exposed to a story in one of three videotape formats (audiovisual, video only, or audio only). Comprehension of the story and memory for the temporal order of events were assessed. The 5- to 6-year-olds in the video-only condition performed more poorly on the comprehension questions and tended to remember temporal order (as assessed by a picture-ordering task) less well than did subjects in all the other groups. The data suggest that understanding and integrating temporal aspects of a narrative are more difficult for young children when the story is presented visually than when it is presented verbally, whereas older children comprehend narratives in both formats equally well. This pattern of results is consistent with research indicating a greater developmental increase in the ability to analyze and interpret pictorial information than in the ability to process verbal information, at least among children in the age range studied. Unique characteristics of the way different media convey information are considered, and apparent discrepancies between the present study and previous research are discussed.