COMMS 2250 Readings

Koops - Imaging Childhood

Koops makes three connected arguments:

1. Historical: Childhood is culturally constructed, and its meaning changes over time.

2. Educational: Our treatment of children has alternated between protecting/restricting them and granting them independence.

3. Scientific: Developmental psychology can challenge our assumptions about children, but cannot determine how they should be raised.

4. Disappearing Child: technology removed adult responsibility, so distance becomes shorter between adults and children

   1. previous to this was children as adults —> infantilization —> back to children like adults

Commonsense Media

1. Children 8 and younger spend about 2.5 hours a day with screens

2. gaming jumps 65% 2020→2024

3. 1/3 kids use AI for learning

4. ¼ have tablet by 2 and by 4 58% do

5. by 8, ¼ have phone

6. short form new

7. parents have concerns about media

8. parents see screens as tool for learning, connection, and a source for positive content

9. daily reading decreases for 5-8 y/o, increases for those under 2

10. about 1/5 use decide for comfort, meals, or to fall asleep

Piaget Cognitive-Developmental Theory

1. Sensorimotor Intelligence (0-2)

2. Pre-operational Thought (2-7)

3. Concrete Operations (7-11)

4. Formal Operations (11+)

assimilation, accommodation, organization

Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Theory

• Instruction important in child development

• Signs: speech, writing, numbers — psych. tools that shape thinking and behavior

  • Piaget’s ego-centric speech improves problem solving

• Internal dialogue

• ZPD: difference between actual development and potential development

• scaffolding

• Mass not effective for development, but social interaction during media use can create a learning environment

Kohlberg Stages of Moral Development

1. Stage 1: Obedience and Punishment Orientation

2. Stage 2: Individualism and Exchange

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3. Stage 3: Good Interpersonal Relationships

4. Stage 4: Maintaining Social Order

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5. Stage 5: Social Contract and Individual rights

6. Stage 6: Universal Principles

Stage 7(Possible): Spiritual Reasoning

Crawley: Effects of repeated exposures to a single episode of the television program Blue’s Clues

Shows the same Blues Clues episode for 5 days to 3-5 year olds

• looking remained same except for 5 year old boys

• verbal and nonverbal interaction increased —> comprehension increased

Jennings: Why do kids think Dor the Explorer is their friend?

PSI: simulation of conversation to audience (feels two-way)
PSR: Attachment, Character Personification, Social Realism (one-sided)

PSR Impacts: educational content, violent content, and targeting(economically)

Bandura: Imitation of film-mediated aggressive model

group 1: aggressive model irl

group 2: same aggressive model on film

group 3: aggressive cartoon on film

1 and 2 —> increased aggression

3 —> increased aggression, but imitated specific actors of real-life more

Gerbner: Cultivation analysis

Cultivation: contribution of tv viewing to people’s conception of reality

1. Institutional Analysis

2. Message System Analysis

3. Cultivation Analysis

   1. Mainstreaming

   2. Resonance

Postman

TV opens secrets and provides a window to world.

Literature/Prev. Media different in that it is less accessible, more costly, and requires a higher barrier to entry(readability)

Gilligan’s Women Development

1. Orientation toward individual survival

2. Goodness as self-sacrifice

3. Morality of non-violence

critiques:

• society’s functions not innate

• reinforces stereotypes

• confuses biological sex as gender

Hoffman: Empathy

1. global empathy

2. egocentric empathy

3. empathy for others

4. empathy for other’s life conditions