TV, FIlm, Video Games Development

TV, FIlm, Video Games Development

1. Media habits have been shown to be related to: youth drinking, youth smoking, childhood obesity, sleep disturbances, poorer social relationships, fewer social interactions, school performance, aggression, prevalence of symptoms of psychological trauma

2. Exposure

   • At least one television set is found in 99% of Australian households and nearly half (48%) of all private dwellings not only have two or more television, but all these sets are on standby and ready to use.
   • Australians adults spend, on average, about 2 hours and 46 mins per day watching television as a main activity or have it running in the background while they do something else.

3. The American Academy of Pediatrics (1999) has recommended that children younger than 24 months of age not be exposed to TV.

4. Do infants even look?

   • Children increase their attention to the screen from 11% of total looking time at 6 months to 39% at 3 years.
   • Children aged 12 to 15 months show substantial amounts (48% to 74% depending on things such as familiarity) of looking at programs intended for these age groups (Barr et al., 2003)
   • Do infants learn?
     • compare children’s ability to learn new skill from a live demonstrator or a video tape (representing TV) or control group. When children see the demonstration through video, they don’t imitate. 18 month old see these behaviours on video, they’re more likely to follow. But they don’t learn as much as if they see it in person. 12 and 15 months old are not doing much better than the control group. In the early stages of the second year of life, it appeared to be not learning a lot from TV. 15 month olds are showing some capacity for learning. Beam push into the jar, 15 months old doing better than the control group, slightly better in the video group. Shift in the learning after 2nd year. But not learning as well. Kids don’t really learn from TV before 2 years old age. (Barr & Hayne, 1999)
     • Developed their own DVDs like the Baby Einstein. See if children would accurately learn word objects. IV: Direct parent teaching the child (direct 1 on 1 interaction) / Direct parent sitting there watching the DVD with their children. DVDs are a waste of money. Child is not going to learn much from it. If you want them to learn, you have to sit down and teach them. (DeLoache et al., 2010 )

5. Advertising

   • Children’s programming can be surrounded by advertisements for merchandised products related to the program. Serves to commercialized children. Teaches them that they need to really really have these things. Less of program content and more of the fact that they’re exposed to advertisements at a very early age. As advertisers and TV producers become smarter, there will be product placement. E.g. watching a cartoon about fairies, there will be products on fairies. In some countries, if the television show is spongebob, you cannot advertise spongebob products.
   • Young children have profound difficulty in differentiating show from an advertisement. They often interpret the ad as part of the show. Make links in their minds about how the product is linked to the show they’re watching. Makes them want the product more. Good for building brand loyalty. Advertisers start to pitch brands to young children through TV. By 18 months, babies can recognize logos, and then by 2 years, they ask for products by brand name. During their nursery school years, children will request an average of 25 products a day, and by the time they enter primary school, the average child can identify 200 logos. Notion of link that progams are linked to products. Big business in terms of huge sales: US$30 million from US children’s direct spending and US$600 billion of influence over parental purchases. Understanding of brand loyalty. Encouraging children of the products they want but they do not know it themselves.
     • US children's direct spending: US$30 billion, another US$600 billion of influence over parental purchase (Schor, 2004)
   • Experimental group: smurf toys, smurf cartoon, smurt toys.Control 1: Smurf toys, Game, Smurf toys,Control 2: Troll toys, smurf cartoon, smurf toys (just cartoon having the effect) The combination of product-based television and thematically-related toys is clearly most inhibiting to creative imagination. Children in experimental group were much more likely to act out what they’ve seen in the TV show. You’re much more likely to play with the smurf toy and act out what they’ve seen in the show. (makes you not use your imagination so much and makes you imitate what you’ve seen) and most stimulating to imitative imagination. And they acted out pro-social behaviour. (smurfs always work together to solve problems). e.g. Ben 10. Unsure about whether the show or the toy came first. They have fewer main characters, fewer subplots, gender stereotyped characters, fast-paced, heightened aggression/violence. (Greenfield et al., 1990)
   • Condition 1: ‘specific product based programs’ Condition 2: ‘non-specific product based programs’ Condition 3: ‘neutral programs’ Thomas vs Blinky Bill vs Ben 10. Procedure: Basket full of toys. Some toys were associated with shows they might have watched, neutral toys. Neutral vs non-specific vs specific. No difference between before they watch the show. In terms of novelty and play, it’s about the same as before they watch the show. No imitated play because there is no association of toy and show. When children are watching such shows like ben 10, it makes them more imitative of what they’ve seen and less creative. (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2012)
   • 1. The effect of product-based TV on children's pretend play depends on the program's genre. 2. Non-specific product-based programs have little impact on novel pretend play and are equivalent to watching non-product based programs. 3. However, specific product based programs encourage less novel pretend play and more imitative pretend play.

6. Violence and TV

   • The size of the effect that media violence has on aggressive behaviour is comparable or greater than that of many other biological public health threats that are generally accepted as serious. (Huesmann, 2001)
   • Short vs long term effects
     • Short-term effects are due to:
       • Priming processes.
       • Excitation processes. Observed violence increases arousal thereby reducing the ability of inhibiting mechanisms to restrain aggression.
       • The immediate imitation of specific behaviours.
     • Long-term effects are due to:
       • Schemas about a hostile world. The kinds of attributions one makes about others' intent.
       • Scripts for social problem-solving that focus on aggression. Coordinated sequences of behaviour to be used in particular circumstances.
       • Normative beliefs that aggression is acceptable. Rules for appropriate behaviour against which scripts are evaluated prior to use.
   • Bandura and the Bobo Doll
     • Children who watch that the woman treated the Bobo doll violently will model the same way to the Bobo doll.
   • Correlational studies
     • The vast majority of correlational studies have found that children who watch more media violence day in and day out behave more aggressively day in and day out. r= .15 - .30
   • Longitudinal studies
     • 3-year longitudinal study of children living in Australia, Finland, Israel, Poland and the US. TV habits of even first graders predicted subsequent childhood aggression. (Huesmann et al., 2003)
       • More aggressive children also watched more TV, preferred more violent programs, identified more with aggressive characters, more likely to perceive TV violence as like real life.
         • 15 year follow up: r= .21 (males), r= .19 (females). High viewers much more likely to engage in a variety of very serious aggressive acts: criminal, spouse abuse, assault.
           • Effect could not be explained by causality. More aggressive people simply liking to watch violence in the media. Artifacts of social class, intelligence, poor parenting, parenting preferences for violent media.

7. Video Game Violence

   • 65 boys aged 6-9 years. Experimental condition: given playstation II console + 3 games. I’ll either give it to you now or give it to you 4 months later. Those that got the console did worse in reading and writing, for teacher reported learning problems. Displacement Theory. It’s not that video games itself made you bad. It’s more of that you spend more time playing the video games rather than doing your homework etc. It’s more about the things that are happening around it. (Weis & Cerankosky, 2010)
   • Blood and Aggression (Barlett et al., 2008)
     • Uni students played Mortal Kombat (max/medium/low/no blood). Increased in state hostility pre to post playing, BUT only for the max and medium blood conditions. Max blood condition showed significant increases in physiological arousal. Blood groups more likely to use weapons.
   • Adolescent boys who look to the mass media for role models will find plenty of tough male warriors who solve problems using aggression, show no remorse for their aggressive actions, and are rarely punished for behaving aggressively. (Konijn et al., 2007)
   • Wishful Identification
     • Social Learning Theory emphasizes the importance of observing and modeling the behaviours, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others. (Bandura, 1973).
       • Similarity identification: The observer identifies with the character because they share salient characteristics.
       • Dehumanization
         • A process in which people disengage their moral self-sanctions, thereby reliving themselves feelings of guilt over their aggressive actions (Bandura, 2002)
         • While playing violent video games, the player typically sees him- or herself as "a human perpetrator engaging in repeated acts of justified violence" (Smith et al., 2003)
         • Two tasks: one on liking of game, second on ratings of in-group (Britons) vs out-groups (immigrants) on the Big 5 personality factors. Played Lamers (violent), Tetris (neutral), lemmings (prosocial). Individuals see their in-groups positively (violent, neutral, prosocial). Individuals see their out-groups negatively (violent). There is no data that said that it will cause players to harm another person. (Greitemeyer & McLatchie, 2011)
     • The observer desires to emulate the character, either in general terms (as a role model for future action or identify development) or in a specific terms (extending responses beyond the viewing situation or imitating a particular behaviour).
       • 112 boys (mean age 14 years) randomly assigned to one of the 4 conditions: nonviolent-fantasy (super mario), nonviolent-realistic (FIFA), violent-fantasy (involves killing), violent-realistic (first person shooter game where setting is in real world). Play game for 20 minutes. Competitive reaction-time task, winner blasts loser. Level of noise set between 60db (Level 1) and 105db (Level 10 ~ smoke alarm) Told levels 8,9 and 10 could cause permanent damage. When they don’t identify with the character, they set the noise higher (nonviolent video games). When they identify with the character, they set the noise higher (violent video game)
         • Results: the most aggressive participants played a violent video game and wished to be like the violent character in that game - especially when the game was realistic.