![]() ![]() My team and I conducted a recent study showing that including a 30-second clip prior to the episode that explains the inclusive message to children before they view the content can help increase prosocial behaviors and decrease stigmatization. This may inadvertently teach the wrong message, because children tend to focus on the behaviors modeled for the majority of the program. For example, many shows actually model antisocial behaviors during the first three-quarters of the episode before finally modeling prosocial behaviors at the end. However, watching this episode did not make children more likely to play with or view disabled or overweight children favorably.īased on my own work, I argue that one reason inclusivity can be difficult to teach in children’s TV may be due to how narratives are structured. The townspeople initially did not want to include Clifford because he was too big, but they eventually learned the importance of getting to know others before making judgments about them. Multiple studies have shown that children are more likely to exclude others from their social group after viewing an episode explicitly designed to promote inclusion.įor example, an episode of “Clifford the Big Red Dog” involved Clifford and his family moving to a new town. One skill that has proven difficult to teach children through media is inclusivity. Just a single viewing of that one episode can positively influence several aspects of a child’s cognitive and moral development. It also increased the nuance of their moral judgments and moral reasoning. Research on an episode of “Arthur” found that a concrete example of a main character experiencing life through the eyes of another character with Asperger’s syndrome improved the ability of child viewers to take another person’s perspective. This is because children younger than about age 7 struggle with abstract thinking and may have difficulty generalizing content they learned from media and applying it to their own lives. Programs have also incorporated concrete examples of desired behaviors, such as treating a neurodiverse character fairly, rather than discussing the behaviors more abstractly. Known as active mediation, research has shown that talking about the goals, emotions and behaviors of media characters can help children learn from them and even improve aspects of their own emotional and social development. This is because children are more likely to learn when a supportive adult or older sibling is watching the show alongside them and helping explain or connect it to the child’s life. These are often commentary about popular culture that require context children might not be aware of or involve more complex language that children might not understand. You may have also noticed that children’s media often features jokes that seem to be aimed more at adults. Participatory cues are a prominent feature of children’s shows like ‘Blues Clues.’ They also increase children’s engagement with the educational content of the show over time, particularly as they learn the intended lesson and can give the character the correct answer. This design strategy, known as participatory cues, is famously used by the shows “Blue’s Clues” and “Dora the Explorer.” Researchers found that participatory cues in TV are linked to increased vocabulary learning and content comprehension among young children. ![]() These strategies are still shaping children’s shows today.įor example, you may have noticed that some children’s television characters speak directly to the camera and pause for the child viewer at home to yell out an answer to their question. With help from the pioneering research of “Sesame Street,” along with research from other children’s television shows both in the industry and in academia, the past few decades have seen many new insights on how best to design media to promote children’s learning. “Sesame Street” did not include divorce in its content until 2012. In this case, children misunderstood some key information about divorce. In some cases, such as a 1992 program designed to teach children about divorce, the entire episode is scrapped. If children do not learn the intended message, or are not engaged and attentive, then the episode goes back for editing. ![]() The Sesame Workshop uses muppets to teach children about difficult topics. ![]()
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