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Communicative performance with media: Effects and implications of television and adult-child interaction on preschooler's language

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Communicative performance with media: Effects and implications of television and adult-child interaction on preschooler's language

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Content COMMUNICATIVE PERFORMANCE WITH MEDIA: EFFECTS AND IMPLICATIONS OF TELEVISION AND ADULT-CHILD INTERACTION ON PRESCHOOLER'S LANGUAGE by Robert Henry Epstein A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Communication Theory and Research) December 1977 Copyright, Robert H. Epstein, 1977 UMI Number: DP22332 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, th ese will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI DP22332 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Dissertation Publishing Microform Edition © ProQ uest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United S tates Code ProQ uest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346 U N IV E R SIT Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L IF O R N IA TH E GRADUATE SC H O O L UN IV ER SITY PARK LOS A N G ELE S, C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7 C tA '78 This dissertation, written by Robert Henry Epstein under the direction of h.X.%.. Dissertation C o m mittee, and approv^ed by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by The Graduate School, m partial fulfillment of requirements of the degree of O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y Dean December 12, 1977 D ate disse: 'MMITTvEE /, Chairman ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ,To Thomas Alva Edison whose life inspired a personal quest : for creativity, iTo my parents and brother who bore the brunt of my inven tiveness, To my friends and to my parents1 friends who morally sup ported my ideas, To Jack, Rose, and Patrick for confusion, argument, and understanding, To Professor Rockcastle who warned me that creativity and research should be simple, To the head-straightening friends at DU and to Dr. Harold Mendelsohn for teaching dedication and ways of knowing, To my new family as a supportive population, To Ambassador and Mrs. Annenberg for an opportunity, To four fellow doctoral students requiring only footnotes for complete answers, To Dana Camp, John Cameron, and Loren English for their well-timed assistance, To recent friends and professional associates for helping to theorize about reality, To Bette Midler for entertainment leading to sanity, To Baden D. Worst for teaching the value of a work done by oneself, To the children for their patience, To future children who may grow up and care, To my chairperson and advocate, Frederick Williams, for a great deal. To members of my committee, Professors Monty C. Stanford and Margaret C. Smart, for many stipulations on becoming a colleague, To Dianne A. Bozler for making the task a bit easier, To Carol Gardner Epstein for love, To my grandparents for flying in airplanes and not under standing how, Thanks alot, Robert TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................... ii LIST OF TABLES ......................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES...........................................viii Chapter I. OVERVIEW ........................................ 1 Statement of the Problem .................. 2 Assumptions Experimental Manipulations ................ 6 Overview of Variables The Dependent Variables The Context Conditions Differences in PCI Treatment and Predispositions Summary ;..................................... 22 II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ..................... 24 Television and Communicative Performance . 25 Language Gains Associated With Television Viewing Communicative Performance Performance Variables in the Television Setting..................................... 37 Television Viewing as a Family Activity Context Dependency and Attention: Related Variables Physical Considerations: Stimulus Materials, Context Variation, and the Testing Situation Summary 66 Page : III. METHOD .......................................... 69 i Operational Development ................... 69 Subjects Experimental Manipulations Procedure Scoring Statistical Analyses ........................ 87 Analysis of Variance With Repeated Measures Mean Comparisons Relationship Among Dependent Measures IV. RESULTS.......................................... 94 Differences Among Televised-Context Conditions ................................ 94 Dependent Variable: Form Dependent Variable: Function Dependent Variable: Utterance Length Summary of Context Influences Differences in PCI Treatment.................104 Dependent Variable: Form Dependent Variable: Function Dependent Variable: Utterance Length Summary of PCI Treatment Influences Relationships Among the Dependent Variables......................................110 V. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS ................... 113 Overview of the Experiment...................113 Discussion of the Results ...................115 Differences Among Televised-Context Conditions Differences in PCI Treatment Relationships Among the Dependent Variables Implications for Future Research ......... 128 Implications Derived From the Results Suggestions Relative to Experimental Design iv Page Policy Implications ....................... 133 The Role and Responsibility of Parents and Significant Others REFERENCES .................... 136, APPENDIXES .............................................. 15 4 A. Project on Television in Early Childhood Education Experimental Manipulations and Treatment Group Differences ................ 155 B. Experimental Control: Number of Probes Examined for Bias By Analysis of Variance With Repeated Measures ....................... 157 C. Coding Procedures and Examples ............ 160 D. Dependent Measures' Mean Tables ............ 164 v LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Variations of the Televised Contexts: Presence and Relevance ......................... 8 2. Questions Asked of Each Subject and Associ ated Televised Interference Objects ......... 75 3. An Example of Timing of Probes and Tele vised Contexts in the Preliminary and Test Sessions.............................................80 4. Proposed Analysis of Variance With Repeated Measures .......................................... 88 5. Analysis of Variance of Form ......................96 6. Interaction of Age and Presence in Terms of the Dependent Variable - FORM ....................97 7. Analysis of Variance of Function ................. 99 8. Analysis of Variance of Utterance Length . . . 100 9. Interaction of Age and Presence in Terms of the Dependent Variable - UTTERANCE LENGTH . .102 10. Interaction of Age and Relevance in Terms of the Dependent Variable - UTTERANCE LENGTH ........................................... 103 11. Interaction of Age and Parent-Child Inter action (PCI) Treatment in Terms of the Dependent Variable - FORM .......................105 12. Comparison of Treatment Group Means on the Dependent Variable - FUNCTION ................ 107 13. Comparison of Treatment Group Means on the Dependent Variable - UTTERANCE LENGTH .... 109 14. Zero- and First-Order Partial Correlations Among the Dependent Variables ..................Ill vi 15. A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. Page An Overview of the Relationships Among the Independent and Dependent Variables ......... 126 Project on Television in Early Childhood ( Education Experimental Manipulations and Treatment Group Differences .................. 156j Analysis of Variance of the Number of Experimenter's Probes for Each Subject .... 158 Number of Experimenter's Probes for Each Subject ........................................... 159 FORM Coding Procedures and Examples ............ 161 FUNCTION Coding Procedures and Examples .... 162 UTTERANCE LENGTH Coding Procedures and Examples........................................... 163 FORM Score Means ..................................165 FUNCTION Score Means ............................ 166 UTTERANCE LENGTH Means ......................... 167 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Steps in the Assignment of Objects to Context and Order................ 77 2. Experimental setting ............................ 82 CHAPTER I OVERVIEW Television viewing in the United States starts at an early age. Several studies, taken together, indicate that the young child starts viewing accidentally to intermittently to regularly between 12 and 30 months (Anderson and Levin, 1976; Appell, 1963; Epstein and Bozler, 1977; Murray, 1972). Estimates of daily exposure range from 45 minutes to 2 hours at two years of age; from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours at three years; 1.6 to 3 hours at four; and, 2.3 to 3 hours when five years old (Epstein and Bozler, 1977; Schramm, Lyle, and Parker, 1961). While there is no average preschool child, considering that the 'range of daily viewing is between 0 and 11 hours, most children have been reported viewing everyday for at least 2 hours (Epstein and Bozler, 1977; Lyle, 1972; Schramm et al., 1961). As television increasingly becomes a source from which children derive information, the manner in which it provides experience is of great concern to behavioral scientists, educators, and parents. Television is a potential source of primary linguistic data. Where television sets are on in the home 6 to 7 hours daily, a child is inevitably exposed to a great quantity of “televised" language. The television 1 picture, moreover, portrays the role and circumstances of I communicative behavior in a variety of situations. With the enormous number of hours that children are in a television setting, it is surprising that only a few reports have noted television-presented language and other communicative behaviors used as the child's own behavior. Although vocabulary gains from commercial television have been reported both in experimental and casual observations (for example, Schramm, Lyle, and Parker, 1961; Witty and Batinich, 1969), the gains appear to be short-lived (Maccoby, 1963). No evidence exists in both commercial and educational television research of television aiding or harming language acquisition, and little evidence has been found that relates to performance itself. Statement of the Problem Various forms of verbal activity are known to accompany some television viewing (Chen, 1972; Sproull, 1973) . This suggests that communicative performance in the television environment is variable and an important aspect of assessing language learned from television. In general terms, the problem posed in the present research relates to ways in which a child's communicative performance in a television viewing situation is affected by changes in the televised context, and how this may vary 2 further with the child's previous experience with television. Young children's communicative performance is highly context dependent relative to their age and other variables. It is known that children's age is related to their degree of dependence upon context (Flavell, 1963), to their ability to center in on one aspect of a stimulus (Katzman, 1972), and to their attention toward various context modalities (Perelle, 1976). Also, a dependence on context appears to vary among various levels of the socioeconomic status of children (Bernstein, 1964). The manner in which context and situational variables affect a young child's overall communicative performance is an area of substantial research (for example, Bloom, 1975). Little is known, however, about televised contexts, particularly, the extent of the child's dependence upon it, and performance rules operating in this situation. A concern of the present research is the degree to which children's predispositions toward television affect their communicative behavior in a television-related situation. In a child's development of communicative behavior, feedback from others to her or his verbal-vocal activity plays an important role. Through interaction (or lack of interaction) with others, performance rules (predispositions toward particular communicative 3 behaviors) are learned as part of the child's social 'development, and have a bearing upon what, when, where, to ■whom and how he or she vocalizes (see Hymes, 1970; 1971). I jsince research indicates that television viewing requires i little, if any, overt activity from its audience, the child is neither using language nor receiving responses to her or his verbal behavior. What the research seems to indicate is that a child's passive viewing of television, as a source and an experience, may not contribute to cognitive and communicative development. Assumptions Television, as a source, is a one-way channel that provides the viewer with a relaxed and vocally passive role. As an experience, television viewing is typically a < ? social activity requiring little verbal or nonverbal, vocal or nonvocal activity to participate. The television experience is best described as habitualized behavior involving little interaction and even less interruption. Some "social" situations, like television viewing, do not promote overt communicative behavior. While many adults find the ambient quiet a preferable setting for viewing television, this environment is not beneficial to young children developing their first language (DeVito, 1970). Here is a situation where the child learns often not to speak even though discourse or reaction may be 4 appropriate in the context presented by the television. The child learns not to test the appropriateness of a I 'language structure or a communicative behavior, a handicap to the natural developmental process. Where language ordinarily serves to lift experience away from a dependence upon context and assists in the cognitive processes of abstracting symbols from objects, it is not done while viewing "Kojak." Some educational television programs use overt vocal activity as an educational tool, ,but this may lose effectiveness as young children generalize to their commercial television viewing behavior. Also, environments demonstrated on television might become associated with the passive behavior that accompanies viewing. Children's overt behavior permits adults and others in their environment to provide the appropriate feedback for behaviors that are not innate. As demonstrated in past intervention projects using parent and child interaction (Bronfenbrenner, 1975), major changes in language behavior are made when there is overt activity around a common event. The television experience can become an active event, a situation necessary for the developing child. In terms of a child's communicative performance, identifying what contributes to his or her vocal behavior in the television setting will assist researchers in understanding what determines overall behavior and how its development may be affected positively. i i Experimental Manipulations The present experiment was designed to study the effects of two aspects of the television experience on children's (lower socioeconomic status, 51 to 71 months) communicative performance. Two research questions were .posed: "Will communicative performance (like other behaviors) simultaneous with televised presentations be influenced by the televised context?" And secondly, "What effect does a child's past experience with television, particularly how she or he associates the experience with social vocal behavior, have on the child's future language behavior in the television setting?" [1] Overview of Variables A brief overview of the variables in the present study are indicated here. Definitions and further elaboration of the variables and propositions follow 1) The research questions were examined acknowledging that several limitations would affect the generalizability of the findings. First, only a limited age range was examined on a small sample. The children's families were low and low-middle socioeconomic status and had limited education. The experimental treatment period extended only four weeks. Finally, in testing the extent of the effects of the present treatment and context manipulations, only the television setting was used. 6 within the development of the hypotheses. Three indicators of communicative performance were selected as dependent measures: form— a measure indicating the variety of the parts of speech used in a child's response; function— the degree to which a response answered a probe in the form of a "How" question, such as, "How do you cut with a knife?"; and, utterance length— the number of words in the child's response to the probe. Televised presentations of objects arranged to provide two sources of context variance— presence and I relevance— accompanied a task-oriented dialogue between the experimenter and the experimental subject as a means of assessing the first research question (see Table 1). To test the unique question of the present experiment— what is the effect of manipulated predispositions toward television viewing on children's subsequent communicative performance?— three groups were experimentally created [2]. Essentially, these groups differed in their recent experience and focus of parent and child interaction. One group's dyads had undergone a scheduled period of interaction using the children's television viewing experience as the focus of conversation, another group had similar interaction but 2) The Project on Television in Early Childhood Education was a joint venture of the USC School for Early Table 1 Variations of the Televised Contexts: Presence and Relevance Variable Level Definition Presence Present - an object is shown on the television screen for 10 seconds prior to the probe; concurrent with the probe and continuing afterwards, the object is on for an additional 20 seconds. Total time object shown: 30 seconds. Absent - an object is shown on the television screen for 10 seconds prior to the probe only; for the remaining time, color bars and static are seen. Total time object shown: 10 seconds. Relevance Relevant the object displayed on the television is concordant with the object referred to in the probe. Irrelevant - the object displayed on the television is not the one referred to in the question asked by the experimenter but may be interpreted relative to the verb used in the question. with home and community experience as the discourse topic, and the third group served as a control by not .participating in any scheduled interaction sessions. (Further differences among the three groups created are discussed in Appendix A.) Finally, consideration was given to the independent • variable, age.* children were differentiated by whether they were below or above 59 months of age. An average of 54 months was obtained for the younger group, and 64 months for the older group. Other independent variables normally considered in communicative performance assessments were held constant or randomized. These included: socioeconomic status, stimulus materials, topic, task and setting, time, experimenter, prescribed norms, and school. The Dependent Var iables Form is simply the structural properties of language whereas function is the purpose for which language is Childhood Education and the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California. Its purpose was to explore ways in which the numerous hours of commercial television already viewed by young children could be made more beneficial to the child. The Project undertook a one-month demonstration field experiment in March 1977, which focused on changes in parent and child interaction resulting from a treatment of scheduled and focused interaction sessions. used. When dealing with children with various prior experiences in a particular situation— such as answering t questions about television— their answers will be E distinguished by form and functional differences (Williams, 1969). The relationship between function, in general, and form in the answers of children acquiring their communication skills is described by Lewis (1963): The acquisition of the linguistic forms of the mother tongue is not simply the acquisition of a system of utterance; it is the mastery of a means of communication— the use of forms to achieve functions. It is true that form and function do not always grow at the same pace. Children use words in advance of concomitant command of their functions; they also attempt communication for which they have as yet only inadequate linguistic means. (pp. 109-110) In particular, the effect caused by a dependence on context varies with the language measures that have been used (Miner, 1969; Williams, 1969). Thus, it was expected that measurements, such as form and function would provide separate analyses of a child's response to a question in a particular context. The inclusion of utterance length as an additional dependent measure is worthy of consideration. As a child goes beyond minimally fulfilling the functional requirements of a task situation, there is a corresponding rise in utterance length (Smith, 1974). This relationship has been found also with increased sentence form 10 complexity by Loban (1966). Besides the relationships :with form and function, age and experimental variables seem consistently to affect utterance length (Cowan et al., 1967). Therefore, a measure of utterance length [3], in addition to measures of form and function, should serve as a dependent measure in the analysis of children's communication behavior in meeting the demands of a task. The Context Conditions The first research question posed by the present study was whether the effects of a televised context would be similar to results of previous research in real and !other "mediated" contexts. One way of testing the influence of televised contexts was to provide a varied context and check on the resulting behavior of the children. More specifically, the present design employed television as a communication context, a context that was manipulated to provide variations— presence and relevance— presumed relevant to a child's performance of linguistic tasks. Familiar objects were televised that were either relevant or irrelevant to an experimental probe defining the task. The objects were shown either before (absent), or before and during (present) the production of the experimenter's utterance. 3) Various measures of utterance length have been used in numerous studies (see Strandberg and Griffith, 1969, for one review). Effects on Form. The lower socioeconomic status population is generally considered to be highly context i dependent (Cazden, 1970). In other words, without an appropriate context, it would be predicted that a child from this group would find it difficult to encode a response, and so, would provide only a minimal utterance. Whether the object present is relevant does not matter (in determining the form score) . Regarding age and form, several studies (in particular, Hopper, 1971; McNeill, 1966) suggest that around 48 months the child's development of grammatical competence is nearly complete. This may be true but performance with various contexts— whether in terms of depending upon context, focusing on relevant aspects, or attending to a stimulus mode— is forever developing as experience with each context increases. (C. Chomsky, 1969, disagrees that grammatical development ends at 48 months.) Age reflects experiential differences [4]. Thus, communicative performance variance (due to differences between scores of the present and absent contexts) should 4) Preference of a stimulus or stimulus mode requires prior learning; otherwise, attention is at first haphazard. Age reflects a difference in prior experience with television, particularly, in terms of cumulative exposure. Assuming that regular viewing starts at two years of age, a six-year-old child compared to a five-year old, has had four years opportunity of viewing compared to three years for the younger child; this is one-third more viewing opportunity. 12 depend upon age. In other words, depending upon their ; degree of experience (as indicated by age) with the televised context, the children should differ in their reliance upon what is displayed. Based on prior research, predicted variations in performance for form are: Hypothesis 1_: For form, scores in the present contexts are greater than scores in the absent conditions. Hypothesis 2: For form, differences occur that represent the interaction of age with presence. Effects on Function. In answering a "How?" question, one must provide a response that refers to the action verb and object posed by the probe. If the wrong object is discussed in the response, any instructions provided in the response are meaningless to the requirements of the probe. It is more likely that while the wrong object would not be verbalized in the child's response, presentation of an incongruent object would result in a confounding frame of reference being brought to the child's thoughts. Thus, it would be expected that relevance would have an effect on the outcome as measured by function. 13 The prior research is unclear on how a variation in presence would have an effect. Also, the age range in the present experiment is not anticipated to be influential. While the age heterogeneity in this experiment may be great enough in providing an estimate of experience with the television situation, the difference between younger and older in the present sample does not provide a great enough difference for spanning developmental stages that would ensure functional differences. This, then, permits .only one hypothesis for function; Hypothesis 3: For function, scores are greater in the relevant contexts than in the irrelevant contexts. Effects on Utterance Length. While they share common .variance, the three dependent variables should differ in I some ways, as has already been indicated by the differences in predictions between form and function. Similarly, utterance length as a dependent variable requires additional hypotheses. Where there is no context to fall back on or to supply reference, a young child, particularly a lower socioeconomic status child, will likely be reticent to respond. Some suggest that the young child may not even 'associate the probe with the stimulus unless observed ^simultaneously. With a high dependence on context, the i 'child might tune out as a television context disappears i iduring the absent condition. Overall, it appears that the child would say little without a support context (whether relevant or irrelevant). Thus, a prediction of utterance length differences due to presence based on reasons similar to those supporting the prediction about presence 'affecting form is tenable. Sociolinguistic researchers (for example, Labov, 1970; Williams and Naremore, 1969) report that when some children are in a situation where they are required to respond, if they are not sure of the task requirements or their ability to respond, they may hesitate in providing what might be a wrong answer. The child's response will likely consist of short and unconnected guesses aimed at meeting the functional requirements of the task. In experiencing irrelevant contexts, the child's certainty of response should decrease. The child will provide short and quick responses to check on whether she or he is meeting the function requirements. Therefore, it is predicted that variations in relevance have an effect on utterance length. The argument for age affecting utterance length is not as straightforward as for the effects of presence and 15 ;relevance. It might be expected that with increasing age ,there is an increase in measured utterance length. As was \ ■indicated regarding form, however, it has been established ;that after about four years of age this relationship tends to weaken. Therefore, a prediction based on age alone cannot be made. On the other hand, it appears that the predictions regarding age and utterance length are like those for age and form. That is, utterance length varies with the situation and the child's familiarity with the , situation. Depending upon a child's degree of acquaintance with a television setting, it is anticipated that finding developmental trends reflected in either an increase or decrease in dependence upon the television context, and in the retrieval of information from the source will be found. With the current population, therefore, a difference due to age alone is not expected. However, a difference due to interaction with television I context variables is possible. Further predictions of interactions among the three variables are not warranted given the state of current research. Some investigators (for example, Cowan et al., 1967) believe that communicative behavior, particularly length measures, are affected through combinations of assorted variables. While this is probably true, unfortunately no particular pairs or groups of variables have been identified that give consistent results. 16 Therefore, no further interactions are stated at this ■time. From this discussion regarding utterance length, the following hypotheses can be made: Hypothesis _4: For utterance length, responses made in the present condition are longer than those in the absent state. Hypothesis f5: For utterance length, those responses made in the relevant context are longer than those responses reflecting the irrelevant context. Hypothesis jS: For utterance length, differences occur that represent the interaction of age with context; an interaction with either presence or * * relevance or both indicates such a difference. Differences in PCI Treatment and Predispositions Rules of interaction are tied to specific settings in which they are learned. For instance, if a situation requires solemn and ritualized behavior, such as in a cburch, and a person not knowing the rules of interaction begins to swear at a friend standing several pews away, he will likely be admonished. A week later, when he travels to church again he will likely behave differently than the 17 week before. Yet, more rules not learned the preceding week may be violated. A child frequently violates rules of interaction. Each week in a young child's life unknown rules are violated. As he or she gets older, the child learns the social rules such as when to speak and so forth. Sometime after, the rules are discovered, and they are incorporated into the young child's behavioral repertoire. At this point, it might be said that the child is "predisposed" to behave in a certain way. The second question posed in the present research is, "What effect does a child's past experience with television, particularly how she or he associates the experience with social vocal behavior, have on the child's future language behavior in the television setting?" To test this, predispositions toward discourse in the television setting were manipulated by creating differences in the parent-child interaction (PCI) treatment of the children. Through a four-week treatment with various emphases placed upon the use of television in parent and child interaction, three differently predisposed groups of subjects were created. These groups are: parent-child-television interaction group (PCTVj, where television was selected as the topic for parent and child interaction; parent-child interaction group (PCI), where community themes were selected as the focus of ! ^iscussion; and the control group, where there was no lencouragement of parent and child interaction on any topic i ‘ (see Table 2). The suggested outcome of the PCI treatment conditions is a difference in predispositions (or psychological preferences and sociological rules). In the case of interaction with television used as the topic of conversation, a predisposition that it is "ok" to talk in |the television setting is assumed [5j. To demonstrate 'that any effects resulting from this bias were not caused by an increase in parent and child interaction alone, two experimental groups were used. The only differences between these two groups were the topic and situation about which they interacted. What are the likely reasons for PCI treatment group differences? The supposed difference between the PCTV group and the control group would indicate, that were an 5) For the present population, these treatment differences should be greatly enhanced. In lower socioeconomic status families, conversations about television content in the presence of the television set appear to be absent. The television set serves as the focus of attention for an audience. Probably, middle socioeconomic families already engage in treatment-like activities (although the evidence is not all that clear for the middle socioeconomic status), and by using these families the proposed treatment would likely have less, if any, effect in creating different groups. 19 effect created, parent and child interaction associated with the television situation was responsible. If a similar difference between the PCI and control groups were found, however, this would indicate that any form of parent and child interaction about a topic, and not necessarily associated with setting, would be just as effective. On the other hand, if PCTV were more influential than PCI, which in turn, was more effective than the control group, it might be implied that the “community events" topic is less stimulating to the children than television as the topic of discussion, and that the physical setting was relatively unassociated with the parent and child interaction that had occurred. It may be found that only the PCTV group is significantly different from the control group. If this were the case, it could be argued that this result was caused by PCTV facilitating interaction by bringing into the child's mind the notion that in an environment where two persons are together in a television-related environment, social vocal activity is allowed and does occur. Now that the overall influences of PCI treatment have been discerned, the next step is to specify how each dependent variable might be affected [6]. First, one 6) While complex interactions— three- or four-way— might result with the addition of the PCI 20 jiieeds to look at what likely differences will be caused by :PCI treatment alone. With form, differences reflecting i jvariations in context use are expected. There are two I steps involved. Once attention is paid to the stimulus, a greater variation in performance scores concomitant with stimulus variation should result. In other words, the PCTV group should rely upon the televised context to a greater degree than either of the other groups. From this, it is anticipated that the PCTV group would do about as well in the most favorable context (present-relevant) as it does poorly in the other conditions. Thus, in overall performance on form there should be no differences among groups. As stated earlier, some interaction between PCI treatment and age might be anticipated. Research indicates that function and utterance length demonstrate much reliance upon prior experience with a situation, and with interest in the topic of discussion. Variations in the televised context should not greatly influence this relationship. Therefore, differences among the treatment groups on these dependent variables are predicted. With no other suggestions gleaned from the research literature, the following hypotheses were proposed: treatment, there is insufficient evidence upon which predictions can be made for any of the dependent var iables. Hypothesis l_x For form, differences occur that represent the interaction of age with PCI treatment. Hypothesis 8: For function, (a) the PCTV group performs significantly higher than the control group, whereas (b) the PCI group does not demonstrate a similar difference. Hypothesis 9_: For utterance length, (a) the PCTV group produces significantly longer utterances than the control group, whereas (b) the PCI group does not demonstrate a similar difference. Summary The proposed experiment is essentially made up of two experiments. The first experiment examines the extent to which previous findings on context dependency in language behavior can be generalized to the television context. If the hypotheses are supported, two benefits will accrue: (1) There will be an increase in support for present theory, and, (2) the effect of televised contexts on children's behavior will be extended to communicative performance in the television setting. 22 The second experiment within the proposed study is an examination of the PCI treatment upon the communicative performance of young children. To the sociolinguist, this I is the first time that predispositions toward a medium have been viewed, and this is the first time where any predisposition has ever been manipulated a priori. From a perspective focusing on the effects of the television situation or the broader picture of media use socialization, much can be discerned regarding (a) how previous experience with a medium can influence future behavior in the environment of the medium, (b) whether a program of parent-child-medium interaction regardless of content influences language behavior, (c) what concerns are warranted when an experiment involves some measurement using the communicative performance of the child in (or not near) the vicinity of a medium, and (d) what the combination of these concerns suggest for further research. 23 ' CHAPTER II i | REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE i i i i i ! The language of television is heard by the young child from day one increasing to where regular viewing occurs about three hours daily. Friedlander (et al. , 1972) felt that the television voice may have some influence even upon the earliest moments of linguistic development. When viewing occurs simultaneously with listening (between 12 and 30 months), the influence of 'television probably increases as language is heard in (the viewed) context. Several researchers have called for investigations of the effects of television upon language while others have postulated effects. Roberts (1973, p. 175), in a chapter about language and mass media, asked: "What are the implications for children of a world where the mass media are almost inescapable. . . ?" One author (DeVito, 1970) has presumed the advent of television has reduced the differences among socioeconomic environments. In proposing an equation for predicting language development, C. Chomsky (1972) has given a negative weight to the amount of television viewing. A passage from Cazden (1966) outlines the issue: Lastly, what about television? Children from lower-status groups watch as much TV as high-status groups, if not more (Keller, 1963; Wortis et al. , 1963). Why isn't this extra language stimulation more beneficial? Is the critical difference passive listening to a monologue versus active participation in a dialogue? If so, then what of the supposed benefit of listening to stories? Is attention to language reduced when it is embedded in the context of constantly changing stimuli? (P. 196) In the remainder of this chapter the following areas of research literature are reviewed: television and communicative performance, and performance variables in the television setting. Television and Communicative Performance Within this section two areas are covered: language gains associated with television viewing, and consideration of communicative performance. ' Language Gains Associated With Television Viewing Numerous studies report on young children's use of language first heard on television [1]. Experimentally, a majority of the studies represent associations between television viewing and language behavior. They do not 1) A comprehensive review of language learning and acquisition from television is available elsewhere (Epstein, 1977), and only a selective summary is given here. 25: ■demonstrate causal relationships, such as children observing some bit of language from television, learning ,or acquiring it, and then, using it in their behavioral repertoires. As with other "effects research" much of what appears to be an effect is mediated by other influential sources. Research and findings about language and television have been concerned primarily with the learning of vocabulary, sight identification, and the recitation of commercial jingles and phrases. Most of the reported •studies involve vocabulary gains from television (for example, Evans, 1955, 1957; Himmelweit, Oppenheim, and .Vince, 1958; Schramm et al., 1961; Witty and Batinich, 1969), although, these appear to be short-lived. Recent reports regarding educational attempts to teach vocabulary, such as "Dual Audio Television" and "Sesame Street," indicate similar shortcomings (Borton, Belasco, and Bakerville, 1975; Cook et al., 1975). Some researchers have noted the ability of children to identify alphabet characters, proper names, brand names, and printed words (for example, LaPlante, 1969; Lyle and Hoffman, 1972; Mason, 1965; Osaka Prefectual Center for Scientific Education, 1964; Torrey, 1973). Identification, however, has been found limited depending on closeness to the original typography and meaning in the 26 ^presentation (LaPlante, 1969). j Japanese researchers (such as, Hatano, Yamamoto, and ]Terauchi, 1963; Institute for Broadcasting Research, 1965; NAB Institute, 1967) and others (for example, Lyle and Hoffman, 1972; Schramm et al., 1961) report children reciting phrases and singing commercial jingles. Some of the children found the television dialogue useful when faced with similar real-life situations (Schramm et al., 1961). The NAB Institute (1967) explained the use of these language segments as resulting from a two-step flow 'process. Opinion leaders first used the expressions, and then, they were subsequently employed by other children. Overall, the learning of phrases and commercial jingles appears to be limited to the situation in which they were originally heard unless incorporated into peer dialogue where other meanings are attached to the language segments. Other factors have been studied. The complexity of television language has received contradictory criticism. For instance, several studies (for example. Beach, 1974; Fasick, 1973) have looked at television dialogue as language input, and found it syntactically simple and functionally invariant. On the other hand, others (Borton et al., 1975; Cazden, 1966, 1972; Shipman and Hess, 1968, cited in Cohen, 1974) have suggested that the language is 27 ,too complex. Williams (1969) and Cazden (1972) remark ithat television language is not distinctive enough, and in 1 f competition with the "attention-grabbing visual stimuli," I the language receives little attention compared to the visual message. Educational television efforts have been primarily aimed at examining and formulating the television stimulus in an effort to make exposure sufficient for learning (W. Allen, 1971). The most highly touted educational solution was initiated by Children's Television Workshop 'with the productions, "Sesame Street" (Ball and Bogatz, 1970; Bogatz and Ball, 1971; Lesser, 1974; Polsky, 1974) and "The Electric Company" (Children's Television Workshop, 1971; Ball and Bogatz, 1973a, 1973b; 1974). Basically, the content of these programs meets the following criteria: (1) grabs attention (Palmer, 1969a, 1969b, 1973; Sproull, 1973), (2) is comprehensible (Palmer, 1973), (3) mixes entertainment with education (Palmer, 1969a; Cooney, 1971), and, (4) elicits activity (Chen, 1972; Palmer, 1973). Prompted by the success of commercial television's advertising messages and campaigns, Children's Television Workshop used attention-grabbing stimuli and repetition of familiar sequences as their primary instructional tools. But this is a "conditioning" rather than "linguistic interaction" approach. An alternative line of reasoning posited by other iresearchers (for example, Hymes, 1972; Milkovich et al., '1975; Sveriges Radio, 1976; Williams, 1969) suggests that i mere exposure is not sufficient for television language to be incorporated into children's behavior because of intervening psychological and social variables. Hymes states "the point is that identification and motivation are what count, not exposure" (1971, p. 17). In another study, it was suggested that role-identification and ^motivation are developed by way of the child's language community, and that the language heard on television may fail to fit the needs of a particular speech community (Milkovich et al., 1975). Williams' (1969) study of how Detroit children talk about television found socioeconomic status, the mother's communication style, and what the child's linguistic ability was prior to and subsequent to successive television exposures as influencing the results. Swedish researchers (Sveriges Radio, 1976) have looked at children's language abilities, communication patterns within the family, and demographic variables as they might impact upon what television language children may incorporate into their own repertoires. In summary, it appears that a host of variables that accompany exposure may be of importance in what a child gains linguistically from television. 29 i Critique. The basic difficulty in assessing ■television language recited by the young child is that the s researcher cannot be sure of the manner in which it has been incorporated into the child’s behavioral repertoire. As indicated earlier, evidence suggests that the performed language is short-lived, used only in similar stimulus conditions, and consists primarily of language segments. What is learned appears similar to what has been called, in linguistic and child development literature .respectively, prefabricated routines (Brown and Hanlon, ; 1970) and unassimilated pseudolanguage fragments (Inhelder and Sinclair, 1969). These types of verbal behaviors are .believed not to contribute to the young child's linguistic i and cognitive development (Piaget, 1955). In particular, they do not reflect the rule-governed behavior that is necessary in the development of a context-independent communicative behavior repertoire. Nonetheless, the present evidence is all that is available. Television is only one of many potential language inputs. Its effects, as already noted, are situated in an environment of intervening influences. The ethical considerations of an experiment in which subjects are socialized to use commercial television as a primary source of linguistic data from which to acquire a first language preclude the performance of such an experiment. Even if the child could be so trained, the need to aim the 30 language at a level usable by the child would be .exceedingly difficult beyond a case study level, a characteristic incompatible with commercial television as we now know it. Therefore, in dealing with the grammar of a child's first language, researchers have been forced to measure fragments of language learned from commercial television rather than the results of generating deep structures. Communicative Performance i Measuring spontaneous fragments of language does not reflect the child's underlying competence (Hurst and Jones, 1967). Competence, whether one is referring to linguistic competence (knowledge of grammar, semantics and phonology) or communicative competence (knowledge of available ways of speaking), cannot be adequately measured, especially in the young child. To obtain indices of competence one can either observe an individual across a range of circumstances and infer competence from performance, or ask the individual about the acceptability of a particular usage. The first approach never adequately covers the range of available circumstances nor typically indicates the effect of each situation upon what is produced. Asking about acceptability does not work with young children (Bloom, 1975) . Some games have been ;developed to determine grammatical competence— from using tricks (for example, Berko, 1958) to asking about "what :sounds right" (for example, Fraser, Bellugi, and Brown, 1963)— which, in turn, lead to generalizability and probability questions. A more promising line of research is to look at what influences performance in a particular setting. Performance is "verbal habits; what a person does do; the realization of linguistic knowledge in behavior as affected by such interpersonal factors as setting, topic, 'participants and language function. . . ." (Cazden, 1967, p. 137). It is also known as "applied communication" (Brown, K., 1976) or "communicative performance" (Hymes, 1970, 1971). In operation, it is best described by Cazden (1970) : At any one moment, a child decides to speak or to be silent, to adopt communicative intent A or communicative intent B, to express idea x or idea Y, in form 1 or form 2. The options the child selects will be a function of characteristics of the speech situation as he perceives it on the basis of his or her past experience. We observe that a particular child in a particular situation either makes or fails to make a particular utterance. Traditionally, we have related that utterance only to some characteristics of the child, such as his social-class background, while ignoring characteristics of the situation which are at least equally influential. (pp. 84, 86) 32 ; The television situation is one experience that can be examined in terms of the opportunity it provides for children to engage in vocal interaction with others. When television was first introduced, it soon became a family member (Coffin, 1948). It appears to have caused 60% of the families who had purchased a set to talk less— "an audience rather than an intimate group"— than before television ownership (McDonagh, 1950, p. 121). In another survey, 58% of the mothers reported little or no family interaction, particularly, that the kids were quieter (Maccoby, 1951) . i Other descriptions of interaction in the television ■setting included: "Group television watching can no more be called a social activity than a number of monologues in the same room is a conversation" (Demant, 1955, p. 223); although it brings people into the same room it limits conversation (Steiner, 1963); some families talk about the shared inexpensive experience and others use it to avoid conversation (Appell, 1963); "rather than television viewing providing a surrounding context for talking, it may be the master of.the situation, not the servant" (Greenberg, Ericson and Vlahos, 1972, p. 19); because of television, leisure-time activities are reorganized and the overall amount of family communication decreased (Rue, 1974) . 33 For toddlers, the experience may not be as vocally passive as the above comments indicate. Halpern (1975) painted this alternative picture: By the time they reach the second birthday, and begin to speak, there occurs a decided shift to greater attentiveness and echoic imitation which allows for a more receptive attitude toward the sound-picture machine. Moreover, young children receive praise and other rewards from parents for verbal and nonverbal imitation of electronic messages. Quite naturally, they learn most easily those scraps of information to which they are most frequently and repetitiously exposed. Fragments from animated commercials are among the first vocal accomplishments of many toddlers. (p. 66) It does not necessarily follow that the descriptions of vocal communication accompanying television are contradictory. There are three points that explain apparent inconsistencies. First, the manner in which a child views television progresses both developmentally and experientially. When the child is first vocalizing, parents probably receive more pleasure from the child than television. As the child begins to converse excessively, and when the imitations are no longer a novelty, parents may react differently. Also, television may be used to keep the child quiet rather than to promote vocalizations. A second point is that in many descriptive studies about vocalizations that accompany television viewing, the family behavior is not unanimous. Most studies report roughly between 50% and 60% of those families surveyed are icharacterized by little or no interaction (Maccoby, 1951; McDonagh, 1950; Walters and Stone, 1971). What about the 1 rest, the other 40 to 50%? What makes these families talk more than the others? Answering these two questions leads to the final point about the television experience and < discourse. Vocal behavior during the television experience is affected by a number of influences. Some such factors 'include: socioeconomic class (Martin and Benson, 1970; 'Williams, 1969); topic of program (Prawat and Prawat, 1975; Walters and Stone, 1971; Williams and Naremore, 1969); cognitive difficulty (Chen, 1972); eye contact (Sproull, 1973); and who's viewing with the child (Borton, Beiasco, and Echewa, 1974; Chen, 1972; Martin and Benson, 1970) . Summary and cr itique. Children are frequently found in an environment that includes television. As they are developing their first language it is experience with the environment that affects their progress. In particular, the environment influences how and when they use their communicative knowledge. A brief summary of family television viewing has demonstrated that associated communicative performance is variable. 35 Unfortunately, the studies mentioned have not covered .language performance in the television setting from a i jlinguistic perspective of communicative performance and .with a priori hypotheses. In particular, because the paradigm is just now formulated, no study has asked about media-related communicative performance relative to sociolinguistic predispositions (or rules of interaction). The next section of this review attempts to define the issue. 36 Performance Variables in the Television Setting The importance of situational factors, although not ^previously discussed at length in past language and television research, has been noted in theoretical discussions of language development and performance (for ■example, Cazden, 1970; Hymes, 1967; Labov, 1972). Numerous experiments have tested various combinations of situation factors. Cazden, John, and Hymes (1972) provide many examples. There are many studies that view factors affecting language performance (for example, Gourley, |1974; Helsabeck, 1971; Hoffman, 1973; Hopper, 1971; Hopper and Miller, 1972; Smith, 1974). One way of viewing the multitude of factors affecting communicative performance in a given situation is expressed by DeVito (1970): All communication takes place in a context which exerts a powerful, but sometimes unperceived, influence on both the form and substance of the communication act. . . . The psychological, sociological, and physical contexts are not independent of one another; rather they interact freely and continuously. (pp. 80-81) In the remainder of this chapter, in an order loosely tied to the sociological, psychological and physical categories suggested by DeVito, research will be reviewed as it relates to the description of variables selected for the 37 .present study. Television Viewing as a Family Activity Young children learn the prescriptions of settings in terms of social rules and roles acquired in interaction with their family and close community. What they learn as rules and roles, in turn, determines what the selection of available messages will be. Families have a tremendous opportunity to offer different television experiences, particularly, as television watching has become a major family activity. The increased use of television over the past 30 years has greatly influenced the evolution of other activities families engage in, as well as determining the time available for them. Television has changed family relationships and.responsibilities. Parents now have an "easier" role in their children's upbringing, and children have available an unusual source of experience. But what exactly are the family relationships during the act of television viewing? In what sense can television viewing be called a "social activity"? What are the new parental responsibilities? How do family television viewing patterns impact upon a child's communicative performance? Unlike an earlier discussion in the present research where amount of viewing and vocalization was reviewed, the following section looks at the circumstances and underlying "rules of interaction" that accompany the family television experience and how these rules influence a child's communicative performance. Television1s effect on family life. Centrality of the television set tends to bring families together some time during the day. Nine times out of ten, there is a television set in a household's den, family or living room (Bower, 1973; Epstein and Bozler, 1977). In 94% of one-set homes and in two-thirds of multi-set homes, the family comes together in this central location at least once daily (Bower, 1973). Although 50% of American households own more than one television set (Broadcasting Yearbook, 1977), the effect of bringing the family together is not drastically reduced. Multi-set availability contributes to added viewing convenience (Chaffee, McLeod and Atkin, 1971), particularly, to additional and solitary viewing by the child (Garbarino, 1975). Thus, on a daily basis, most households tend to view television together, usually in one of three basic social groups: entire family, husband and wife, and mother with children (Bower, 1973). More specifically, estimates of preschool children's solitary viewing is only about 10% to 20% of their time spent with television; viewing is usually with parent(s) or older siblings (Epstein and Bozler, 1977; Lyle and Hoffman, 1972). A CBS-sponsored study on family life and the premier of television (Riley, Cantwell, and Ruttiger, 1949) used glorified phrases to indicate television's effect: “enhanced family solidarity*'; "new focus for family interest"; “bridge between adults and children"; and, "increased socialibility" (pp. 232-233). On the other hand, Maccoby (1951) found the television experience taking time from other activities and limiting social contact. Depending upon the location of the television .set, some limited activities would accompany viewing. Most noteworthy, Maccoby found children's behavior less bothersome to parents. Television viewing was considered by many parents as a family activity where the child was given a greater degree of participation (in program selection) than in the social activities television replaced (Hamilton and Lawless, 1956). Thus, it was first found that television brought the family together, but at the expense of other activities and interests (Belson, 1958; Bogart, 1956; Coffin, 1948; McDonagh, 1950; Pearlin, 1959; Riley et al., 1949; Rue, 1974). While claims of family solidarity for the television experience continued (for example, Steiner, 1963; Witty, 1966) , the increased use of television prompted others to suggest alternative observations. flimmelweit et al. (1958) indicated that, except for young children, family members are brought together only in a physical 40 ' Isense. Appell (1963) found television brought families | together, but the nature of integration could be either i functional or dysfunctional. Since television had replaced previous family activities, one might expect changes in the socialization of the child. Garbarino (1975) presumed that the role parents play in socialization had been modified by television. Survey research found less than 15% of ■students indicating parental guidance of their children's i television viewing (Witty, 1967). In an experiment where mother and child were observed in a television setting, Gadberry (1974) found little parental intervention. In other words, "television provides the adult with an easy uninvolved role" (Wells, 1974, p. 96). Some (for example, Cohen, 1972; Halpern, 1975) have criticized parents and teachers for permitting television to replace adult responsibilities. Rules and roles of interaction. According to Williams and Naremore (1969), "first, one should examine and adequately define the communication situation, and attempt to determine the types of demands imposed for language usage" (p. 79). In other words, this suggests an examination of the family as it permits or denies certain behaviors, and, thus, defines the demands of the situation (Birdwhistell, 1970, p. 121). Hymes (1964) noted that one 41 should start with defining what constitutes communicative events with its components and associated behaviors. Children learn these along with the acquisition of their language (Hymes, 1967). Rules of use develop in the first year of a child's life, and the child's developing knowledge of the social situation soon leads him to evaluating the social behavior of others (Hymes, 1971). "Children differ in their sociolinguistic knowledge" (Cazden, 1972, p. 102) because they have different prior experiences. These experiences have been outlined by Cazden (1971, p. 43) as language exposure, patterns of interaction, and setting in the child's history. Although little is known about how these are categorized and learned by the child (Cazden, 1972), one possible explanation is based on role behavior. Children learn their roles including rules of communicative behavior from significant others. They learn what to attend and how to react, what meanings are relevant and how to structure these meanings within a particular environment (Olim, 1970). The lessons are taught by observing others interact and in interaction with others (Cazden, 1972). Therefore, a child's verbal ability associated with learned roles increases with greater involvement in an interaction, and more opportunities and materials available for interaction (Jones, 1971). Most children’s opportunities for role learning occur in experiences where their mother is included (Olim, 1970). In turn, the mother's language and her teaching style, specifically the extent of her vocabulary and the degree she discriminates task-specific qualities of the environment, are the best predictors of the child's language performance (Cazden, 1966, p. 212). Following this line of reasoning, what are the ramifications on the child's language performance if parents, particularly the child's mother take a role distinguishing and expanding upon the circumstances of the television experience? Television as a means and medium. The roles children learn to take in the television environment are determined by how family members use television. Television can be used by parents to socialize their children in two ways: as a means and as a source. First, as a means, television can be used as an instrument of discipline. When parents place the child's crib in front of the set (Schramm et al., 1961), using the television as a means of keeping the child quiet (Hess and Goldman, 1962), as an inexpensive babysitter (Walters and Stone, 1971) and as a means of reward or punishment (Albert and Meline, 1958), or any other use that neglects to consider television fare, this represents using television as a means. These uses are 43 ,most frequently employed by the lower socioeconomic I jstatus, and generally, control of content is minimal i ibecause of other parental responsibilities (Hess and ^Goldman, 1962). Unlike their children, parents do not perceive the television experience as a forum for family involvement (Greenberg et al., 1972). Either not being in the room or feeling that television is a way to avoid conversation with the child, the parent does not mediate .what the child is viewing, and, therefore, television as a jsource goes unchecked (Lazarsfeld, 1955; Lyle, 1972; Rossiter and Robertson, 1975). As a source, depending upon a number of factors, television provides children with a variety of experiences and knowledge, such as learning of prosocial and antisocial behavior. The way children perceive and act upon the program material depends upon their competence with media, and their needs and abilities (Roberts and Schramm, 1971). As Leifer (1973) summarized this view, "We need to think of television's effects in terms of the content present, the message the child receives from that content, and the creditability the.child grants to television programs of the type he/she is watching" (pp. 3-4). Television, alone, as a source cannot initiate much responding activity. Even outright efforts from the programming end aimed at involving the child (for example, "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood") were only moderately isuccessful in stimulating the child's activity while |viewing unless an adult was present (Singer and Singer, i 1976). Television serving solely as a source demands jsilent and passive behavior. i Another view is to actively use television as a means. That is, instead of using television to obtain quiescent children, parents should use it to activate their children's learning in cooperative interaction. The television set, when used by parents as a means, is an object around which a set of interaction behaviors occur. The interaction has an associated set(s) of goals and needs for each participant. As the individual reflects upon these, he or she develops a disposition toward that setting. Benefits are derived from rules of interaction that actively engage participants viewing television. The !parent can teach the child discrimination between fantasy and reality through questions (Noble, 1975). Maccoby (1968) recommends leading the child to solutions and then letting him provide the final step. Commenting on content or children's reactions to content would be another way to use television as a means of involving children in role development (Leifer, Gordon, and Graves, 1974). Importance lies in the quality of the interaction— the degree it distinguishes task-specific aspects and provides more opportunity for reflection on content (Hymes, 1972; Cohen, 1972). Aspects of this quality are described by Bronfenbrenner (1976) : An examination of the research literature . . . indicated that, in the early years of life, the key element was the involvement of parent and child in verbal interaction round a cognitively challenging task. A second critical feature was the fact that the mother not only trained the child but that the child trained the mother. A third factor was the existence of mutual and enduring emotional attachment between the child and adult. It is by capitalizing on all these elements, by taking as its focus neither the child nor the parent but the parent and child system, that parent and child intervention apparently achieves its effectiveness and staying power. It is as if the child himself had no way of internalizing the processes which foster his growth, whereas the parent and child system does possess this capability. (p. 250) Bronfenbrenner (1975) calls for intervention that changes the normative circumstances in which the family lives. This can be rephrased as, change the roles and relationships, and subsequently change what the child defines as a setting. Two ingredients have been shown necessary to change television from serving as a source separate from a means instructional material either from the parent or in a program, and an active and participating child. An interested adult present (most likely the principle caregiver) is the best way to get a child predisposed towards an active viewing role in the television setting. Thus, a child's .verbal activity in the television experience can be increased by modifying his or her interpretation of the experience. In the present experiment, the experimental variable, parent-child interaction (PCI) treatment, was created to provide some children with the interpretation of television as a socially-vocal activity. It was anticipated that by making the television experience associated with parental interaction and discourse, a !subsequent change would result in the children's future communicative behavior when tested in a television-related environment. From this, it would be possible to discern iwhether it was a child's relationship with others that regulated his or her vocal activity in the particular circumstance of television. Perhaps, children are learning much language from television but never find the opportunity permitting a display of this knowledge. Context Dependency and Attention: Related Var iables This section examines the effect of context dependency on language performance, and how this varies with age and socioeconomic status. Also, a discussion of attention follows because it is a variable closely related , to context dependency and so affects communicative 47 ; jperformance in the television viewing situation. i i j First, it should be noted that context-independent I juse of language usually is not totally achieved even by iadulthood. The initial sounds of children are reactions 'to their environment. "First, the child learns to respond to speech by acts; then by acts and speech and, from this, by speech alone" (Lewis, 1963, p. 83). Before the second birthday the child can use language referring to absent | objects, however, only with reliance upon clues in the 'environment (Lewis, 1963, p. 83). As children mature, they enter a social environment that requires the use of a common language discriminating what they wish to say ,(Wardhaugh, 1976). Development of language skills, in turn, assists in a greater ability to minimize dependence on, and have greater discrimination of, the physical environment. Young children are not perceptually free of their environment. From 18 to 36 months, their conversations can be described as being in the "here and now" (Brown and Bellugi, 1964, p. 135). Into adulthood, their communicative performance is a product of the nonlinguistic context and their language ability, and relative to their age and experience (Bloom, 1970, 1975). As Bloom (1975) indicated, meaning is derived by "(1) how the child perceives and mentally represents objects and 48 events around him, and (2) the ability to process linguistic messages relative to the contexts in which they occur" (p. 45). The degree to which children attend to various information sources in their environment and the extent of their dependence upon context versus their symbolic competence, determine their definition of the topic. The topic is a function of the child's skills and knowledge, as well as of the medium and task (Salomon, 1976). Consequently, in the case of television as a source, children probably use the content to varying degrees depending upon their language abilities, the required task and their abilities to extract information (Maccoby, 1963). This suggests that context dependency and variables related to it should be considered. A review of research indicates that age and socioeconomic status are related to context dependency, and, thus, to encoding and decoding behavior. Age. Children's perception and representational skills can be considered in terms of perceptual and language development, respectively. These skills are the result of developmental and experiential processes, and, therefore, as Bloom noted above, change with age. A brief examination will provide additional support, and delineate differences between the perception and language processes. Perceptual development changes with age but appears to be stage-related rather than a gradual process. This view is supported from both the child development research of Piaget (1952) , and experiments from information processing (Katzman, 1972; Perelle, 1976). According to Piaget (1964) , perceptual development proceeds by the process of equilibration (like cognitive development), and schema develop to organize environmental stimuli. In the preoperational stage of development (ages of about four to seven years), perception is separate from cognitive processes, and, therefore, children tend to become fixated on one aspect of their environment (Wackman and Wartella, 1977). As they mature, the perceptual schema become organized by conceptual mechanisms and, eventually (around 12 years), children are cognitively in control of their perception and not heavily dependent upon context. While gradual changes appear in the child's behavior, these represent a horizontal development (an increase in the variety of environmental features) rather than a vertical development (a different schema). From an information processing perspective, the perceptual skills of focusing on relevant material and intersensory integration are found to be developmental and stage-related. In several studies (Collins, 1970; Hale, Miller, and Stevenson 1968; Katzman, 1972), it was found that as they get older, children increase in their ability to center in on essential aspects of a stimulus field ^hile there is a curvilinear relationship (drawn at 12 years) on recall of all information. With combined I stimuli sources, such as visual and auditory, it is not until the child's twelfth year that these receive equal attention (Fisher and Rubinstein, 1975; Perelle, 1975, 1976). A child's attention toward a stimulus is dependent upon these abilities which increase with age (Wartella and Ettema, 1974; Yussen, 1974) as is the ability to integrate intersensory information dependent upon age (Yamamoto, •1969). Apparently, not until the twelfth year (Wackman and Wartella, 1977), does a child become independent of context through selective perceptual-cognitive attention processes. Thus, from Piaget's developmental perspective and information processing research, it can be concluded that children under 12 years are not able to decode and encode behaviors independent of contextual influences. While it has already been shown that young children's language is context dependent, how this reflects changes in measures of their production relative to the contexts in which they occur has not yet been discussed. Corresponding with an increase in a child’s age is a concomitant increase in language production skills. For instance, Brown and Fraser (1964) found a strong relationship in children's language performance between complexity and utterance length— that is, as the children became older, both indices increased. Cazden (1966) noted I that after 48 months, children's utterance lengths begin ;to reflect less of their syntactic complexity and more of i I verbal strategy. Cowan et al. (1967) reviewed a number i 1 of studies and found mean length of utterance (measured in number of morphemes) consistently increased with age, although, a number of other variables (stimulus and experimenter) also affected length. A review of the literature several years later (Smith, 1974) found that "regardless of the stimulus materials used, the oral ■ language production increases gradually with each year of growth" (p. 88). Language (form) appears to gradually increase with age, regardless of context, and may be stage-related only in how it reflects semantic developments arising from cognitive changes. Socioeconomic status. Much research (for example, Williams, 1970) has demonstrated that "the ability to process linguistic messages relative to the contexts in which they occur" depends upon an individual's socioeconomic status. Viewing the television circumstances of lower socioeconomic status families provides an interesting example. According to Sweetser (1955), with the advent of television, the activities replaced by television were similar between lower and middle socioeconomic status levels. There were differences, however, in that the 52 jlower-status group appeared to demonstrate greater viewing !of the medium (McDaniel, 1975), with little talking in its !context (Martin and Benson, 1970). Lower-status mothers i i !had been found to view more television during their child's early infancy (Lewis and Wilson, 1972), and, in the next years, to be more laissez-faire about controlling viewing (Blood, 1961). Apparently, although the nature of the activities that television replaced for the lower socioeconomic status families was no different than middle isocioeconomic families, the difference in their ;communication activity remained the same in the television i setting. Differences in children's behavior among socioeconomic groups have also been reported. Williams (1969) found, in examining the discussions between an experimenter and a child, that the topic of television highlighted the difference in socioeconomic status levels. Lower-status children tended to be reticent in the task whereas middle-status children went beyond the task requirements (Williams and Naremore, 1969). Both groups fulfilled the demands of the task, but the lower-status children tended to talk about the plot step-by-step as the middle-status children discussed the plot and theme. In explaining these differences, Williams (1969) suggested that the two groups of children were "attending differently to what was presented in the television 53 iprograms" (p. 353). Dickie and Bagur (1972) report that I lower socioeconomic status children's lack of ability to 1 I respond appropriately to visual material may be due to ! !lack of familiarity in one context and/or the inability to transfer skills from other contexts. An alternative explanation considers the social context in explaining these differences. Unlike the middle socioeconomic status level, lower-status families have established minimal means of communication (Greenberg and Dervin, 1970; Martin and Benson, 1970). As previously indicated, there is more active control of the television experience in middle socioeconomic status families. For instance, like in other situations, in the television setting middle-status children are expected and encouraged to talk more than their lower-status counterparts; this may lead the middle-status child to greater comprehension and more commentary in an environment with television (Noble, 1975). Therefore, besides the possible differences in information processing skills and context dependency among socioeconomic levels, a plausible explanation lies in differences among rules of interaction— that is, when its "ok" to talk and when there is an expectancy of quiescence. Development of attention♦ Context dependency is also related to one's level of attention-related development. 54 Information theory does not adequately explain context idependency or attention to a stimulus. It fails to consider individual's prior experience and the demands of the task he or she is engaged in (Green and Courtis, 1966) . Prior experience in various modes of stimuli presentation and the contexts in which the experience occurred will mediate between the stimulus and the cognition. For instance, picture perception is a learned skill (that is, like reading a histogram) (Church, 1971). As discussed earlier, schema are developed and expanded through experience. What children look for depends in part on their available schema (Mackworth and Bruner, 1970). But before children might view a picture, they must pay attention to the medium in which it is presented. Perelle (1975) describes this two-step process: First, .the child must pay attention to the modality and, then, to the stimulus. Attention to a stimulus mode is based on prior reinforcement and appears to be developmental (Perelle, 1975, 1976). Also, what one sees depends on what one is looking for (Salomon, 1976). Task requirements affect attention. For example, in operating a motor vehicle, the driver continues to function correctly as his or her attention focuses on the road ahead. Likewise, answering questions 55 about what is presented in the television setting will be functionally more adequate if (a) partial attention is 'paid to both the television screen and the questioner, (b) i intersensory cognition compares messages, and (c) the viewer is reinforced for these behaviors. Therefore, it can be seen, that as an individual decodes a stimulus, experience and the task at hand determine what the individual perceives (Rothkopf, 1970) as much as the variation in stimulus itself (Yarbus, 1967). Attention to more than one stimulus source. With investigations using television, attention appears closely associated with content in the form of fast moving, action sequences (Anderson and Levin, 1976; Rust and Watkins, 1975). Estimates of children's attention to televised stimuli (C. Allen, 1965; Bechtel, Achelpohl, and Akers, 1972; Rust and Watkins, 1975; Sproull, 1973; Steiner, 1966) by various means (eye contact, parental estimates, and videotaping of attentive behaviors) demonstrate a consistent group average of 60% to 80% of the time gazing at the television. Some claim this rate is highly attentive and leaves little room for other activities (for example, Milkovich et al., 1975), while others contend exactly the opposite [2] (for example, Appell, 1963). 2) In fact, it has been suggested that viewing is not passive but involves other activities (Lyle, 1972). Furu (1971) reported high viewers of television frequently did __ 56 j Attention to television may be a function of several influences. How much in the past and whether a person !occasionally or frequently watches television affects I i their viewing behaviors (Gadberry, 1974). For high frequency viewers, the presence of television is less of a distraction in attending to other competing stimuli. Also, what is attended to may be influenced by social status. Williams (1969) posited that lower socioeconomic status children may pay greater attention to visual and concrete vocal messages rather than highly complex language. Thus, what an individual brings to the viewing situation and how the situation is structured will influence the individual's focus of attention (Maccoby, 1968). The evidence indicates that families could talk to one another in the context of television, particularly, if such activity became commonplace. Such a task would require attending to both the audio-visual stimulus of television and the audio stimuli of conversation. To a young child, however, complex stimuli could result in confusion or disorientation (Halpern, 1975). There is also the consideration that young children have limited their homework in the context of television. Four-year-old children appear to enjoy playing while viewing television (Anderson and Levin, 1976). Television viewing apparently can serve as a primary or secondary activity as it co-occurs with other activities (Robinson, 1969). 57 .processing capacities. I With a task that requires children to pay attention I [to two different sensory stimuli sources (that is, ! television and the inquisitive adult), there is some need to examine the likelihood of where children will direct their attention and whether they can handle the bimodal task. Asher (1964) proposes the "signal to receptor hypothesis" which suggests that since the young child (the receptor) is forever moving, an audio signal should be conceived of as "wideband" relative to a "narrow-band" visual signal for what will receive the attention of the child— that is, no matter where he or she is facing, the audio signal is more likely to attract the child than is a visual stimulus. Other research (for example, Gropper, 1966; Hartman, 1961) supports the superiority of the audio channel for young children, although, it is only conclusive where the comparison is between audio and print rather than audio and pictorial stimuli (and this, obviously, is a matter of verbal literacy not visual literacy). Apparently, whether two stimuli and/or stimuli sources both receive attention by the child depends on the individual, his or her history, circumstance, and information available from the stimuli themselves. Developmental effects are responsible for limiting the 58 child's attention. Some might expect the young child to ■become fixated on one aspect of the stimulus (for example Travers, 1969; and as indicated earlier in this discussion) and, therefore, not put together two stimuli presented in different or even the same modes. On the other hand, history, circumstance and context information might bring the child to a dually attentive behavior. Visual and audio would be cognitively associated by young children if they appear to occur together (Francis, 1975) The past experience of the child may associate certain behaviors together in a rewarding (or punishing) relationship. Circumstance will permit dual attention (not simultaneous for the young child) when there is sufficient time to switch between channels; this leads to additional perceptual trials in the case of redundant information (Schramm, 1972). What is said and the information supplied by the rest of the context may lead the child to a limited choice of possibilities where both audio and visual stimuli are associated (Carner, 1963; Fry, 1970). Overall, depending upon the child and the task, the physical environment may present a variety of stimuli that are overwhelming or very well ordered. Physical Considerations: Stimulus Materials, Context Variation/ and the Testing Situation In a testing situation, two components of a stimulus presentation are the stimulus and the manner of presentation. The effect of stimuli can be controlled through random selection procedures, presentation of all stimuli to all subjects, and balancing effects of order through Latin square procedures. With the effects of the stimuli controlled for in the present research, little ^discussion need bear upon them, and primary concern can be 'given to the manner of presentation. In addition, the influence of a testing situation deserves some attention. Stimulus mater ials. Toys, films, books, and photographs have all served as stimulus materials in tests of language competence and performance. Materials have been used to invite language in both formal (test cards) and informal (picture books) settings (Hannah, 1974). One review of the literature (Strandberg and Griffith, 1969) listed 15 such studies in the past 20 years. Studies, such as that by Cowan et al. (1967), have demonstrated a range of strength in stimuli's ability to elicit language. Strandberg and Griffith (1969) noted the relative difference in findings among different stimuli and depending on the language measure used. 60 Providing a careful evaluation of the problem, Miner (1969) starts off with the assumption, "it is recognized I [that the stimulus, examiner, subject, language measure and i resulting interactions are all recognized variables in the assessment of expressive language ability in children" (p. 82). She suggests that if tight controls can be used to acknowledge variance that is solely due to the child (repeated measures is a statistical procedure that is capable of doing this), then, a systematic change in .stimuli could be examined as they influence children's language performance. On the other hand, by looking at the behavior of different children while stimuli and experimenter are controlled, differences attributable to group differences could be identified. In either instance finding variation in language performance would be dependent on the types of language measures used. In the summary of her paper, Miner (1969) calls for an evaluation of visual literacy (identifying aspects of stimuli and subjects that cause differences in performance) in a systematic and controlled fashion, unlike the previous research. In order for an individual to use stimulus materials in such a manner as to elicit language, the person has to pay attention to them. Samuels (1970) claims that pictures are used in accordance with a "principle of least effort" (p. 400)— that is, if the information is available from more than one source, the individual attempts to access it through the source requiring least effort to decode. Sometimes when a picture is used, it is difficult to discern which parts of it are relevant. Also, there is no reason to assume that a picture will be associated with the language that was meant to accompany it (Voyat, 1971, cited in Fowles and Voyat, 1974). This may be a result of what Hess and Shipman (1965) call lack of meaning. “By this they mean that a particular act seems not to be sufficiently related to preceding or subsequent acts," reported Brophy (1970, p. 80). Relationship between one event and another may be derived from the task, the context, or the predispositions of the subject (Hess and Shipman, 1965). Context variation. In presentations of stimulus materials, one form of variation can be in terms of the relevance of the materials to the situation at hand. Another aspect of presentation is during the task when the materials are revealed. Concerns regarding the relevance and presence of stimulus objects are briefly discussed. Relevance of stimulus materials has been labeled by Collins (1970) as “central" versus "peripheral." Katzman (1972) has reviewed literature based on this definition and claims the ability to distinguish between the two types is developmental. Task demands determine what is 62 relevant and what is not (Huttenlocher and Strauss, 1968). 'comprehension tasks demonstrate that an analysis of the Istimulus context is made when paired with an utterance to i discern differences and distinguish relevance i i(Huttenlocher, Eisenberg and Strauss, 1968; Huttenlocher and Strauss, 1968; Huttenlocher and Weiner, 1971). As children's ages increase, their ability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant increases, as well as their independence of relying upon context. Thus, younger .children would be expected to pay more attention to the context whether relevant or not, while older children would be expected to be independent of context where their comprehension ability of grammar and meaning were sufficiently developed (Hutson, 1975). Past experiments provide some support for the advantage of relevant contexts over irrelevant contexts. Given a task, a stimulus will have an effect only if it is a plausible part of the task and/or its answer (Archer, 1962). With high probability, relevant materials help and irrelevant materials hinder; relevant materials may confuse the situation whereas irrelevant materials would be helpful when they are less probable. Schlater (1970) and Severin (1967) both found that irrelevancy was not as easily determinable as one might think. Unless the irrelevant stimuli are also possible, then irrelevant channels or cues may be sampled once and left ;uninfluential. Differences in the effects of relevancy on comprehension are measured in terms of efficiency (Treisman, 1968) and “differences in reaction time" (Menyuk, 1971; Morton, 1968) where unlimited time is available to respond. In a language production task, with limited time allowed for a response and with young children, a better measure would be length and adequacy of the response. . The time when a stimulus is revealed, in comparison, has received little attention. One definition calls this concept "referability," the extent to which the stimulus material is available for support (Kroll, 1974). Materials that are present are available for young children to use in assisting their encoding of utterances. When the materials are presented before the task is defined, there appears to be little help in terms of comprehension (Menyuk, 1971) and some children have been reported to "tune out" before the task utterance was made (Shipley, Smith, and Gleitman, 1969, p. 334). Thus, materials presented before the task would likely distract children from listening to the probe, and, therefore, following communication behaviors would be minimal or nonfunctional. Apparently, the supporting context should be available during the period where comprehension of the task occurs (Bransford and Johnson, 1972) . One pair of experiments that demonstrates the influences of these .variables during object and picture demonstrations, irespectively, is that by Hopper (1971) and Hopper and :Miller (1972) . The testing situation. The testing situation is itself a possible source of influence upon children's behavior. While the present experiment is, in fact, focusing on differences regarding variations in the testing situation, a brief discussion follows about limitations of formalized testing. i In testing a child's communicative abilities, control i of the environment is of particular importance because children rely heavily upon context (Olson and Clark, 1976). A testing environment has both normative and physical components. The normative environment is composed of rules of behavior for a particular setting (Moore and Anderson, 1968). Discrepancies between what the child is told are rules and what are perceived as rules should be considered. By observing the child's behavior, one can infer the rules that the child may be using. A comparison between stated and perceived could then be made rather than viewing the child's behavior as deficient when it is "different" (Dickie and Bagur, 1972). To make this comparison, in this review, it has already been established which behaviors are usual and which would be appropriate with the establishment of new rules. Previous research (for example, Miner, 1969) indicates the multitude of variables that could possibly jaffect language behavior. Unique to the testing situation I lare the experimenter, the inducement of behaviors out of i physical and temporal contexts, and the technology associated with scientific observation. There are several available options for a researcher dealing with a formal test situation. An attempt should be made to make the situation and people appear as natural as possible, and to minimize the obtrusiveness of measures. Every source of variance that could result in variation of the dependent measures should be controlled or measured. In addition, 0 researchers should be aware of the limitations of formal testing situations in their operationalization of theory, when drawing conclusions, and, in particular, when making generalizations. Summary This chapter has presented a review of pertinent literature related to the extent and circumstances of children’s viewing, the language behavior associated with viewing, and the effect of context on a child's communicative performance. Specifically, the review focused on variables that impact upon a child's language behavior in the television environment. The present 6.6 Research limits these to four independent variables— PCI [ treatment, age, and the televised context variations of :presence and relevance of stimulus— and to three dependent variables describing language behavior— form, function, and utterance length. In short, a review of the literature found that young children are increasingly using television as a source of experience and learning. Although estimates of television viewing widely vary, on the average, it appears that young children are watching up to an average of three hours daily. In terms of the general knowledge learned, language and language behavior can be included. The extent of language-associated behavior learned from television, however, is limited to that which is replicative and highly context-dependent. An alternative way of viewing language learning from television is looking at the experience of viewing rather than the content of what is viewed. The experience of viewing television teaches the child much communication knowledge. Television viewing frequently occurs in a social setting. Communicative behaviors are part of the social context which family members display and children learn from. In lower socioeconomic families, the general mode of behavior is one of passively viewing television— that is, no interruptions of program content and no discussion 67 of'what's being viewed. Children in these families (and ^probably many others) learn a way of viewing television that limits their active participation in the experience. Young children advance in their development through maturation and experience with their environment. One .form of activity is the verbal labeling of experience, which young children do through vocal means. This assists the child in the development of symbolic thought and context independence. Young children are highly context dependent. They i rely upon aspects of the environment to encode and decode communication in which they are involved. Relevant aspects of the environment are learned through interaction with a parent. Therefore, in the television situation, the language behavior is affected by the context of what is viewed and the amount of attention given to various aspects of the experience. The experiment, which is detailed in Chapter III, examines the extent to which previous findings cited in this chapter can be generalized to the setting of television and investigates the effects of prior experience with a medium (television) on children's subsequent behavior (communicative performance). " CHAPTER III METHOD ] In the previous chapter expected differences of performance were outlined and supported by reviewing past research. The independent variables suggested were parent-child interaction (PCI) treatment, age, and relevance and presence of stimulus. Dependent variables iwere defined in terms of form, function, and utterance length. The present chapter describes the operational development of the experiment in the following sections: (a) subjects, (b) stimulus manipulations, (c) procedures, and (d) scoring. In the last section of this chapter, statistical analyses used in the present study are outlined and discussed. Operational Development Subj ects The Project on Television in Early Childhood Education (hereafter, referred to as Project) made available a population of mother and child dyads who had recently participated in an experimental treatment of varied circumstances during mother and child interaction (see Appendix A). The groups of children made available 69 1 were felt to be more distinct in terms of parent and child interaction differences between groups and homogeneous within groups than were generally available from sampling an untreated population. Description of subjects. Subjects were English-speaking black or Spanish-surname children (n = 24) selected from the children who completed the treatment phase of the Project on Television in Early Childhood Education in the spring of 1977. The subjects ! (11 female, 13 male) ranged in age from 51 to 71 months ! ■with a mean age of 59.3 months. Parents of the subject population had an average educational level of 13 years with a range between 9 and 17 years. Half the families were one-parent households. The average mother (age between 28 and 33 years) worked 25 hours a week in a manual skill occupation and headed a household of two children, one being older than the child in the present experiment. Eighty percent of the families rented their dwellings. Overall, the families of the subject population had a socioeconomic status falling mostly between low and lower-middle class. Selection of subjects. The Project subject pool was 4 drawn from two inner-city preschools, one private and one supported by government funding. Children were assigned randomly to one of three treatment groups— parent-child 70; television interaction (PCTVj; parent-child interaction (PCI); and no parent-child interaction (control). A i imedian-split of age (59 months) was used to provide a i spread of age in all three groups. Of the 55 subjects who completed the Project, 38 were English-dominant [1]. Selection of subjects from the 38 English-speaking subjects made available through the Project was made by (1) choosing only those above 48 months of age, (2) separately selecting at random from i attending students at the two available schools, and (3) designating those children who completed the experiment as subjects. The children's range of ages was selected based on availability and prior research (Hopper, 1971) which suggested at what ages the demand level of the task would likely result in performance differences. This process provided the desired total of eight subjects per treatment group equally selected from both preschools. 1) Only English-speaking subjects were used in the present experiment because: (a) The research on which the hypotheses were based used English-speaking populations, (b) the exploratory nature of the research suggests that were there to be treatment differences it would most likely be uncovered with this population, and, (c) most available local television is for English language audiences. Experimental Manipulations , In determining how to empirically test the stated hypotheses highlighted in the first chapter, the task requirements had to be outlined. In addition, a method of context variation needed to be determined which would not lead to an order bias. Task requirements. The desired situation was to have each subject respond to a set of eight probes that were similar in their level of ''linguistic" demand. Moreover, the level posed by the questions was to be difficult enough to preclude a 100% correct response and to have subjects (if they so chose) use the experimental context. How children respond when answering questions is a reflection of who they are within their family and community (Mishler, 1975). Hymes (1972) views a child's response to questions in terms of the social issue of what is appropriate: Not that a child cannot answer questions, but that questions and answers are defined for him in terms of one set of community norms rather than another, as to what count as questions and answers, and as to what it means to be asked and to answer. . . . In these and many other cases the concern is not with something that is cognitively necessary to the child's intellectual growth, but with something that is considered socially necessary. (p. xxxi) Thus, when answering a question, a child responds to the experimental context as well. In previous research (Hopper, 1971), it was •demonstrated that children between the ages of 40 and 62 :months had never achieved less than 83% correct responses in either grammar or function on "yes-no" questions, and not less than 79% correct on probes requiring labeling for function and 92% for grammar. Higher error rates (up to 75%) were obtained for explanatory and open-ended probes, as would be expected with higher levels of demand. The open-ended demand situation proved most difficult overall for these children. Since the children in the available subject pool were on the average older than subjects in previous research, and because a difficult linguistic task would likely preclude ceiling effects on performance, the open-ended demand situation was used. In arriving at the questions that would define the level of task demand required in the current experiment, it was necessary to depart from an unbiased sample of the available lexicon. Also, generalizing to a larger linguistic universe was deemed unnecessary relative to the aim of the hypotheses. If desired, however, to duplicate the current experiment it would be necessary to choose a similar selection of words. Clark (1973) has suggested that under these circumstances one should provide an explicit description of how the stimulus language was chosen. Thus, the following is an attempt at providing such a description. ; The open-ended demand level probe is composed of "how I Ido you" followed by an action verb and prepositional I iphrase. A list of action verbs was determined by (a) I compiling a list of action verbs from words found in f first-grade children's writing (Rinsland, 1947), and (b) including only those verbs that could be followed by a prepositional phrase and preceded by "how do you." This procedure resulted in a selection of 24 verbs. A list of objects was compiled following the same first step as in the verb selection, using the suggestions of the Project directors, and considering the objects used by Hopper (1971). Taking the two lists, eight action verbs were selected that could be combined with a prepositional phrase that included as the object of the preposition an object from the resulting object list. Table 2 shows the eight probe questions. Selection of the interference objects was made by creating a list of objects that could be the object of the preposition relative to the action verb, and by checking on the likelihood of the subjects's familiarity (not linguistic performance) with the objects as indicated by their teachers. These interference objects are also indicated in Table 2. Context variation. Assignment of the eight questions to one of four context conditions for each of the eight I Table 2 Questions Asked of Each Subject and Associated Televised Interference Objects Question: How do you ? Interference Object look in a book? gift box draw with a crayon? paintbrush play with a ball? toy dog sit on a chair? pillow eat with a spoon? cup ride on a bike? airplane cut with a knife? scissors sleep in a car? bed 75 subjects in each treatment group was done through the use of a Greco-Latin square as outlined by Fisher and Yates (1963, p. 24). Each Greek letter of the square was randomly assigned a question from the list of probes. Two Latin letters were assigned to each communication context. Then an 8x8 Greco-Latin square was created by combining two randomly selected orthogonal squares. The Greco-Latin square was randomly permuted first by rearranging columns and then by rearranging rows (see Figure 1). One of the eight rows was next assigned to one of the eight subjects ,in each of the three treatment groups. No subject ever received the same question twice, but each subject had two probes for each communication context. Each treatment group received each question twice under the same context conditions, and in all four contexts. A communication context was provided by the showing of an object on a television set. The objects included: a small basketball; a stuffed Maltese toy dog; a yellow crayon; a one-inch paintbrush; a dollhouse chair; a lace-trimmed round pillow; a plastic serving spoon; a white ceramic cup; a box wrapped-up as a present; a children's book; a silver knife; a pair of scissors; a plastic model of a bicycle with a man on it; a plastic airplane; a plastic toy car; and a dollhouse bed. Each object was shown approximately the same size against a blue background. 1 1• Objects randomly assigned' numbers 2. Contexts given letters No. Object Interference Object Letters Context 1 ball toy dog 2 crayon paintbrush A, B Present/Relevant 3 chair pillow C,D Present/Irrelevant 4 spoon cup E, F Absent/Relevant 5 box book G,H Absent/Irrelevant 6 knife scissors 7 bicycle airplane 8 car bed .3. Two orthogonal Latin squares chosen (numbers replace letters on the second square for convenience in notation) by random selection. ABCDEFGH 12345678 Al B2 C3 D4 E5 F6 G7 H8 DCBAHGFE 56781234 D5 C6 B7 A8 HI G2 F3 E4 HGFEDCBA 21436587 H2 Gl F4 E3 D6 C5 B8 A7 EFGHABCD 65872143 . „ . . . _ , 4. Combxned = E6 F5 G8 H7 A2 Bl C4 D3 FEHGBADC 78563412 — — .- F7 E8 Hb G6 B3 A4 D1 C2 GHEFCDAB 34127856 G3 H4 El F2 C7 D8 A5 B6 CDABGHEF 87654321 C8 D7 A6 B5 G4 H3 E2 FI BADCFEHG 43218765 B4 A3 D2 Cl F8 E7 H6 G5 V II '5. The Greco-Latin square is first randomly permuted by column. B2 D4 F6 H8 E5 Al G7 C3 C6 A8 G2 E4 HI D5 F3 B7 Gl E3 C5 A7 D6 H2 B8 F4 F5 H7 Bl D3 A2 E6 C4 G8 E8 G6 A4 C2 B3 F7 D1 H5 H4 F2 D8 B6 C7 G3 A5 El D7 B5 H3 FI G4 C8 E2 A6 A3 Cl E7 G5 F8 B4 H6 D2 6. And then, by randomly permuting rows, this provides the final assignment to be used in the experiment. Order: 1st ;2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6 th 7 th 8th 1 A3 Cl E7 G5 F8 B4 H6 D2 2 Gl E3 C5 A7 D6 H2 B8 F4 3 D7 B5 H3 FI G4 C8 E2 A6 4 H4 F2 D8 B6 C7 G3 A5 El 5 E8 G6 A4 C2 B3 F7 D1 H5 6 F5 H7 Bl D3 A2 E6 C4 G8 7 B2 D4 F6 H8 E5 Al Gl C3 8 C6 A8 G2 E4 HI D5 F3 B7 Figure 1. Steps in the Assignment of Objects to Context and Order. 77 , For the experimental situation, videotapes were made ithat demonstrated the eight sets of objects, provided ‘constant conditions across subjects and groups, and aided in the sequencing and timing. Between presentation of contexts colorbars and static were seen. The four televised communication contexts are outlined in Table 1. Briefly reviewing, the relevant-present context occurred when the object of interest was shown before and during the experimenter's probing of the subject; the relevant-absent context prevailed when the relevant object was shown before the question was asked; the irrelevant-absent context included the presentation of an irrelevant object only before the question; and, the irrelevant-present context was obtained when the irrelevant object appeared both before and during the probe. Pretests of the test stimuli suggested videotaping all objects in the experimental assignment rather than switching objects before a live camera. Besides problems with obtaining constant conditions where necessary, mechanical problems of lighting arose, and images remained on the television screen after the object was removed. The timing of object presentations was another result of pretesting. A search for the best time to ask a question after an object was shown, for optimum duration 78 for presentation of an object in the present mode, and for |the time needed by the child between probes resulted in ;the following (see Table 3): Absent was defined as 10 i seconds of object presentation immediately followed by the probe; present was defined as an additional 20 seconds of object presentation following the "absent" time and simultaneous with the probe; and the time between questions (where all are allowed 30 seconds) was 10 seconds. In total, a preliminary warm-up session and the asking of the eight questions to each subject took less than twelve minutes. Procedure A trained female experimenter made the initial contact with the selected children and led them to the experimental setting. Although somewhat of a stranger to the children, a black female experimenter, instead of a familiar white male or female, was used during the experiment. She was felt to be essential in making the children feel at ease for the experiment. Experimental setting. Testing took place immediately following the Project treatment (within one week) and required one day at the private school (full-day of classes) and three days at the state-supported school (half-day classes). 79 Table' 3’ An Example of Timing of Probes and Televised Contexts in the Preliminary and Test Sessions ISESSION Time (min.:sec.) Televised Context Experimenter's Utterance PRELIMINARY 0:00 Colorbar (CB) 1:00 Hairbrush 1:10 Hairbrush What do you do with a hairbrush' 1:30 CB 1:40 Plant 1:50 CB Why do you wear a shoe? 2:10 Hammer 2:20 Hammer Why do we write with a pencil? 2:40 CB 3:00 Telephone 3:10 CB Why do we talk on the telephone' 3:40 CB 3:45 OK, THAT WAS VERY GOOD. NOW LET'S KEEP PLAYING THE GAME. REMEMBER, I WILL ASK A QUESTION AND YOU ARE TO ANSWER IT OUT LOUD. TEST 0:00 CB 0:10 Chair 0:20 Chair How do you sit on a chair? 0:40 CB 0:50 Animal 1:00 Animal How do you play with a ball? 1:20 CB 1:30 Bicycle 1:40 CB How do you ride on a bicycle? 2:10 Box 2:20 CB How do you look in a book? 2:50 Car 3:00 CB How do you sleep in a car? 3:30 Spoon 3:40 Spoon How do you eat with a spoon? 4:00 CB 4:10 Scissors 4:20 CB How do you cut with a knife? 4:50 Paintbrush 5:00 Paintbrush How do you draw with a crayon? 5:20 CB 6:00 End of Session ----- NOTE: PRELIMINARY session same for all subjects; 8 varieties of TEST. 80 ; Based on a previous randomly selected order and when the child was available, the child was taken from the 'classroom and brought to a familiar room where the testing f (was done. The experimental setting included (see Figure 1 2): a rug for both subject and experimenter to sit on; a portable color television set facing the subject and connected to a remote video cassette player; a mirror behind the subject in which the experimenter could view ;the television set; a directional light hung on the mirror that was remotely turned on to indicate to the experimenter when to ask the questions and when to terminate the session; and two microphones connected to a remote audio cassette recorder. All "remote" chores were done by an operator out of view from the experimental setting. The remote operator utilized a television monitor showing the communication context demonstrated, an audio monitoring of the recorded dialogue, and a stopwatch. Physical conditions of testing between the two schools closely approximated one another. The only difference between the two testing sites was that the private school required the construction of a barrier between the experimental setting and the operator whereas the state-supported school had a separate room available. Normative setting. As the child and experimenter entered the experimental setting, the experimenter stated the following game rules to the subject: 81 MIC ® jJ*MIRROR SUBJECT MIC® EXPERIMENTER TV SET Figure 2. Experimental Setting WALL BARRIER (WALL or TABLE) 82 “OK, now the first rule of the game is that you sit over here (pointing) and I sit over here." I ; “OK, the second rule is that I am going to ask you a question out loud and I want you to answer me out loud, OK?" If the subject gave an indication that she or he understood the rules of the game, then the child was asked to recite aloud her or his birthday indicating to the operator to begin the videotape and timing of the preliminary session. This session included a videotape shown to all subjects that further checked on their willingness to participate, as well as reducing any impact of the television set turning on "by magic." During the preliminary session, the experimenter asked four questions: "What do you do with a hairbrush?" "Why do you wear a shoe?" "Why do we write with a pencil?" "Why do we talk on the telephone?" If a child indicated cooperativeness during the preliminary period, the female experimenter began to present each experimental question in a previously selected order designated by the Greco-Latin square procedure. Two types of prompts were used when the 83 I jSubject did not cooperate [2]. These included either repeating a form of the probe and/or the "rules of the I jgame." The overall atmosphere of the interaction between ■child and adult closely approximated a testing game. A limited pool of potential subjects necessitated the following procedures: If a session terminated before the asking of the first of the eight questions, the subject was brought back once more, and started at the beginning of the procedures. This occurred with two of the children. On the other hand, once the game had begun, if a subject failed to answer out loud to any or all of the questions, this did not terminate the game. When a child left the experimental setting because he or she refused to continue with the game, then the session was declared void and a new child was selected. The two children (a male, control group participant, and a female, PCTV group member) who left the game once before also terminated 2) In the design of the present experiment there was the question of whether the experimental probing might not have been sufficiently controlled. There was the concern that the experimenter might have biased the experimental setting by perhaps probing some children more than others. To check on this possible bias, an analysis of variance was performed using number of probes as the dependent measure. The analysis found no significant main effects or interactions using the number of probes as a dependent variable in a repeated measures univariate analysis of variance (see Appendix B). Apparently, the probing performance of the experimenter was not biased by any of the experimental manipulations. Therefore, it was concluded that the potential influence of biased probing was controlled. 84 ■their second opportunities, and, thus, were not included ,as subjects. i jScor ing Scores were obtained from an analysis of transcripts made from the audio recording. A dictation tape machine, a tape player that allows for easy repeated playback of utterances, provided a useful means of preparing the itranscripts. The transcripts were written in conversational English by one coder and checked for ^accuracy by the black experimenter. Then, in random order, each utterance was scored using a decision model that required the coder to indicate the attributes of the utterance. Using the coded description of the utterance, a score for each dependent measure was determined by a computerized decision model. Briefly, the three dependent measures (described in the first chapter) included: form— a measure obtained by noting the inclusion of a variety of parts of speech in a response utterance; function— where the subject's utterance was rated to the degree to which it fulfilled the required instructional function; and, utterance length— the number of words in an utterance. Decision rules and examples of sentences rated for form and for function can be found in Appendix C. Since there were two instances of each context condition ,for each subject an averaged score was determined. The dependent measures were scored independently although ithere is no reason to believe they are independent of one another. The response given by a subject to a question sometimes included a number of utterances. An utterance was defined as a coherent statement relating to one topic, Utterances not separated by an experimenter's response, and marked by an ‘ 'and" or "em" were considered to be one utterance. Pauses greater than two seconds marked the separation of two utterances. The longest utterance addressing the question was scored. I 86 Statistical Analyses ; The statistical analyses selected for the present ;study included: (1) analysis of variance with repeated ;measures, (2) mean comparisons, and, (3) relationships among dependent measures. Analysis of Variance With Repeated Measures For testing the first seven hypotheses, three overall analyses were calculated. The dependent variables were analyzed separately using 3x2x(2x2) analysis of variance with repeated measures of the last two factors [3]. Calculations were performed on an IBM 370/158 using an SPSS-MANOVA package (see Clyde, Cramer, and Sherin, 1966, for a description of MANOVA). A modification of a design outlined by Winer (1971, pp. 539-559) was used: One nonrepeated factor was added to a 3x(2x2) repeated measures analysis of variance (see Table 4). PCI 3) The choice of which parametric statistic to use, in this case, was in part based on the size of the subject pool. It was expected that less than 40 Project children would be available. The small subject pool would permit a maximum of only six subjects per group (PCI treatment x age). Repeated measurements on subjects would be required, and, in fact, was the suggested procedure from prior research (see Helsabeck, 1971). The small number of subjects, however, eliminated the potential use of multiple analysis of variance and simultaneously viewing the relationships among the dependent variables (Bochner and Fitzpatrick, 1977). Also, other multivariate approaches were deemed unacceptable with such a small sample. The parametric statistic that would not be troubled by the small sample size was the univariate analysis of variance for repeated measures. 87 Table 4 Proposed Analysis of Variance With Repeated Measures Source Error Term Tested Against df E (MS) * BETWEEN SUBJECTS PCI treatment (PCI) Age PCI x Age ERROR A (Subj. within (PCI WITHIN SUBJECTS Presence (P) P x PCI P x Age P x PCI x Age ERROR B (P x ERROR A) Relevance (R) R x PCI R x Age R x PCI x Age ERROR C (R x ERROR A) P x R P x R x PCI P x R x Age P x R x PCI x Age ERROR D (P x R x ERROR A) npq - 1 p - 1 q - i (p - 1) (q - 1) x Age) pq(n - 1) npq(rs - 1) r - 1 (p - 1) (r - 1) (q - 1) (r - 1) (p - 1) (q - 1) (r- 1) pq (n - 1) (r - 1) s - 1 (p - 1) (s - 1) (q - 1) (s - 1) (p - 1) (q - 1) (s - 1) pq (n - 1) (s - 1) (r - 1) (s - 1) (p - 1) (r - 1) (s - 1) (q - 1) (r - 1) (s - 1) (p- l)(q - 1) (r - l)(s - 1) pq (n - 1) (r - 1) (s - 1) ae + rso^ + nqrsa^ a | + rsa^ + nprsaj^ a\+ rso| + nrsa§g a|+ rsa| Op + so Y7T a| + sa^ + a| + sa^-tf + O 0 + SOyff + 0 0+ S0y j p oi+r o%Tf + o| + ra^u + a \ + ro^ + npqs0y nqs0^y npsuf nso a3Y npqr0§ nc2raaS nprcgg + r i r + nro o| +o2 + ° e + °y6tt + 00 + 02 yS" °e + Gy§Tt °I + °y<51 t + a3<5 npq026 nc^aaY5 nPa|Y6 naa3Y<5 NOTE: Derivation taken from Winer (1971, p. 574) * where ii = no. of subj. in each group (4) ; p = no. of treatment levels (3) ; q = no. of age levels (2) ; r_ - no. of presence levels (2) ; s_ = no. relevance levels (2). And where .a2 represents the variance of the main effect or interaction designated by the subscripts; e_ * - ■ common error variance; t t _ - within subject; a_ PCI treatment; £ - age; - presence; 6_ - relevance; and interactions thereof. 83 ■treatment, age, relevance and presence accounted for the 3x2x(2x2) factors, respectively. Thus, form, function and utterance length are considered in this way. In addition, verbal prompting by the experimenter (as a dependent measure) was analyzed in the same manner to check on possible differences in her response to the children. Considerations. There are problems typically claimed regarding analysis of variance with repeated measures, but they are not applicable here. Normally, along with the problems associated with violating the assumption of a regular univariate analysis of variance, there is the additional assumption of homogeneity of covariance between repeated factors (Winer, 1971). Regular univariate analysis of variance has been found robust (Box, 1954) when violations of the assumptions are made, thus leaving the assumption of homogeneity of covariance as the main concern. The covariance assumption requires that the correlations between pairs of repeated measurements on the same factor be statistically equivalent. In other words, the subjects should maintain the same position in regard to other subjects no matter the differences among the repeated measures (Keppel, 1973). This requirement might be mathematically sound but experimentally it is often violated. One would anticipate when dealing with 89 .different treatment groups that they might perform to varying degrees, as they are disposed, to repeated 'measures. Thus, violating the assumption of homogeneous ■covariances should be expected. I While there are various ways of dealing with the covariance assumption (see Greenhouse and Geisser, 1959; McCall and Applebaum, 1973) , and while some might be willing to live with an increase in alpha (see Collier et al., 1967; and Keppel, 1973), the present study dealt with the problem of the covariance assumption by eliminating a chance of violation from the design. This was done in two ways. First, the order of context conditions was randomized and balanced through the use of the Greco-Latin square procedure outlined earlier. By placing every context in a balanced number of positions in which they were presented to the subjects, the effect of any position is equally distributed to all contexts. Thus, an equal amount of error variance is added to each stimulus maintaining equality of covariances [4]. The second way in which the present design avoided the equality of covariance issue was to view the context 4) Negative in the sense of not contributing to the explained variance and not permitting an analysis of the slight possibility of interactions with order of presentation, this procedure did allow leaving context order out of the final analyses. 90 .conditions as two repeated factors having only two levels each. In this instance, there was only one pair of measures for each factor [5]. In conclusion, the overall design that was used here should not have increased the chance of Type I error beyond the stated levels of significance. Mean Compar isons For the last two hypotheses (that is, hypotheses eight and nine), specific statements were made about the relationships between pairs of means [6]. This required specific mean comparisons. The comparisons were made between the control group and each experimental group through simple t tests that were run after assurance of an overall significant main effect indicated their worthiness. By using the SPSS t-test procedures for independent samples (Nie et al., 1975, pp. 267-275), homogeneity of variances were assessed, and the df, where 5) Since the concern is with equality of covariance among levels of each factor and not between factors, the issue vanished with no correlations to compare. Another way of viewing this, from a practitioner's perspective, is that in this instance the conservative test proposed by Greenhouse and Geisser (1959) was equivalent in degrees of freedom to the resulting regular univariate analysis of variance with repeated measures. 6) Simultaneous rather than a priori or post hoc tests were used. With so few comparisons, the chance of inflating alpha by multiple t tests was slight and, thus, acceptable given the exploratory nature of measuring this effect. 91 .necessary, were modified. i Considerations. When an effect has more than two 'levels, a significant difference does not specify which mean(s) differs from which others. In this regard, mean comparisons are usually performed when suggested by prior research. Although the hypotheses did suggest specific mean comparisons for the treatment factor and several of the interactions, a priori tests were avoided and post hoc comparisons minimized. It was felt that the strength of past research did not conclusively support the directions predicted in the hypotheses. In addition, a priori tests were avoided because the specific problems involved with a repeated measures design could not be ascertained. Comparisons of means could have been “planned'1 post hoc for comparing the three levels of the PCI treatment factor, and for the suggested means of the interactions. It was felt, however, that a minimum of secondary analyses should be performed given the problems in establishing the error terms with the repeated measures design. Relationship Among Dependent Measures Pearson and first-order partial correlations were calculated for relationships among the three dependent variables. This was done using the SPSS procedure for 92 calculating partial correlations (Nie et al., 1975, pp. 301-319). Considerations. The relationship between form and function and how these covary with utterance length was considered important in interpreting the results. Where one, several, or some interaction of the independent variables might appear to have a strong relationship with a dependent variable, it was not enough to look at the dependent variable in isolation. However, the circumstances necessitated a univariate dependent measure design. An alternative approach was to note the relationships among the three dependent measures and discuss the implications of the findings. 93 CHAPTER IV I j RESULTS i The nine hypotheses, as stated in Chapter I, were itested by analyzing the differences among context .conditions (presence and relevance), age, and treatment groups (PCI treatment), according to three dependent measures: form, function, and utterance length. Analyses •of variance were performed [1], and the results are illustrated in Tables 5, 7, and 8. In addition, as iproposed in Chapter III, the relationships among the dependent variables were examined. For each dependent variable, mean tables outlining the influence of the independent variables are found in Appendix D. Differences Among Televised-Context Conditions Dependent Variable; Form Hypothesis JL. For form, scores in the present contexts are greater than scores in the absent conditions. 1) For each dependent measure, a 3x2x(2x2) analysis of variance with repeated measures on the last two factors was performed using an SPSS-MANOVA program on an IBM 370/158 at the University Computer Center of the University of Southern California. 94 ! Results. With form as the dependent measure (see Table 5), the analysis of variance with repeated measures I Jon the context conditions demonstrated main effects I ^significant [2] for presence only. Thus, the mean score of 3.0 in the present context was significantly greater than the absent mean score of 2.8. This gave support for the first hypothesis. Hypothesis 2. For form, differences occur that represent the interaction of age with presence. Results. The predicted interaction between age and presence failed to achieve significance. Older children tended to show a greater difference between presence conditions than did younger children (see Table 6). In the present condition, older children scored higher than younger age group but did lower in the absent context. Dependent Variable; Function Hypothesis 3. For function, scores are greater in the relevant contexts than in the irrelevant contexts. Results. In considering main effects of context variation, only relevance differences were found 2) A significance level of £ < .05 was selected for all mean comparisons and correlations. This somewhat lenient alpha was selected given the exploratory nature of the research. 95 Table 5 Analysis of Variance of Form Source df MS F Error Term Tested Against BETWEEN SUBJECTS PCI treatment (PCI) 2 .305 .090 Age 1 .023 .007 PCI x Age 2 3.445 1.018 ERROR A (Subjects within (PCI x Age)) 18 3.383 WITHIN SUBJECTS Presence (P) 1 1.148 8.018 P x PCI 2 .148 1.036 P x Age 1 .586 4.091 P x PCI x Age 2 .102 .709 ERROR B (P x ERROR A) 18 .143 Relevance (R) 1 .023 .027 R x PCI 2 .383 .444 R x Age 1 .128 .148 R x PCI x Age 2 .190 .221 ERROR C (R x ERROR A) 18 .862 P X R 1 .065 .256 P x R x PCI 2 .643 2.529 P x R x Age 1 .023 .092 P x R x PCI x Age 2 .055 .215 ERROR D (P x R x ERROR A) 18 .254 Table 6 Interaction of Age and Presence in Terms of the Dependent Variable - FORM 1 Presence Age Present Absent Younger 2.9 2.9 Older 3.1a 2.7 NOTE: Maximum score = 4; minimum = 1. Interaction significant at p<.10 97 significant in the analysis of variance of repeated measures for function (see Table 7). The relevant mean score, 2.7, was found to be significantly greater than the irrelevant context mean score of 2.1. Thus, the third hypothesis was supported. Dependent Variable: Utterance Length Hypothesis 4. For utterance length, responses made in the present condition are longer than those in the absent state. Results. Viewing the context variation main effects in the analysis of variance for utterance length (see Table 8), presence is found significant. Thus, the fourth hypothesis of the present research is supported— that is, the Present condition produced significantly longer utterances (as measured by utterance length, 8.4 compared to 6.9 words) than the absent state. Hypothesis _5. For utterance length, those responses made in the relevant context are longer than those responses reflecting the irrelevant context. Results. The relevance mean scores for utterance length were 8.3 for relevant, and 7.0 for irrelevant. A significant difference, however, was not achieved. Table 7 Analysis of Variance of Function Source Error Term Tested Against df MS F BETWEEN SUBJECTS PCI treatment (PCI) 2 5.760 4.517* Age 1 .065 .051 , PCI x Age 2 .542 .425 ERROR A (Subjects within (PCI x Age)) 18 1.275 WITHIN SUBJECTS Presence (P) 1 .003 .007 P x PCI 2 .760 2.081 P x Age 1 .128 .349 P x PCI x Age 2 .167 .456 ERROR B (P x ERROR A) 18 .365 Relevance (R) 1 9.065 19.303** R x PCI 2 1.323 2.817 R x Age 1 .586 1.248 R x PCI x Age 2 .281 .599 ERROR C (R x ERROR A) 18 .470 P x R 1 .128 .308 P x R x PCI 2 .198 .478 P x R x Age 1 .065 .157 P x R x PCI x Age 2 .135 .327 ERROR D (P x R x ERROR A) 18* .414 £<•05 * * p<.001 99 Table 8 Analysis of Variance of Utterance Length Source Error Term Tested Against df MS F BETWEEN SUBJECTS PCI treatment (PCI) 2 715.274 4.544* Age 1 1.148 .007 PCI x Age 2 14.837 .094 ERROR A (Subjects within (PCI x Age)) 18 157.416 WITHIN SUBJECTS Presence (P) 1 54.748 5.316* P x PCI 2 7.971 .774 P x Age 1 50.961 5.919* P x PCI x Age 2 8.821 .856 ERROR B (P x ERROR A) 18 10.299 Relevance (R) 1 43.335 2.656 ; R x PCI 2 1.711 .105 R x Age 1 28.711 1.760 R x PCI x Age 2 21.007 1.288 ERROR C (R x ERROR A) 18 16.316 P x R 1 19.708 .391 P x R x PCI 2 21.818 .432 P x R x Age 1 6.252 .124 P x R x PCI x Age 2 49.719 .985 ERROR D (P x R x ERROR A) 18 50.463 * £<.05 100 Underlying the results pertaining to the fourth and fifth hypotheses, and, therefore, of primary importance, are the results regarding the predicted interactions of the sixth hypothesis. Hypothesis 6. For utterance length, differences | occur that represent the interaction of age with context; an interaction with either presence or relevance or both indicates such a difference. Results. The sixth hypothesis is partially supported. Support comes from the significant interaction of presence with age (see Table 9). Nonsignificant mean differences, however, were found for relevance interacting in the predicted direction with age (see Table 10). The differences shown between means in both the present and relevant main effects in the utterance length analysis of variance appear to be due primarily to their interaction with age. As can be seen in Tables 9 and 10, t^ rie younger children are not as influenced by context as are the older children. First, in both the present and relevant contexts, the older children perform better than the younger group, while, on the other hand, in both the absent and irrelevant contexts, the older children produce smaller utterance length scores than the younger children. Augmenting this evidence is the finding that the differences between context variations for presence and 101; Table 9 Interaction of Age and Presence in Terms of the Dependent Variable - UTTERANCE LENGTH Presence Present Absent Age Younger 7.7 7.8 Older 9 . la 6.0 NOTE: No maximum length. Interaction significant at p<.05 102 Table 10 Interaction of Age and Relevance in Terms of the Dependent Variable - UTTERANCE LENGTH Relevance Age Relevant Irrelevant Younger 7.9 7.6 Older 8. 8a 6.3 NOTE: No maximum length, interaction not significant 103. for relevance produced by the younger children do not appear to differ much at all. Thus, context variations ■appear to interact with age and provide support for the sixth hypothesis. Summary of Context Influences Overall, the results of the hypotheses regarding context variation indicate that the presence of an object significantly influences form scores and utterance length, .whereas relevance significantly affects function scores. In viewing the effects of the context variation of presence, an interaction with age should be taken into account. Differences in PCI Treatment Dependent Var iable: Form Hypothesis 1_. For form, differences occur that represent the interaction of age with PCI treatment. Results. As measured in terms of the dependent variable form, there were no significant differences in either main effects or interactions attributable to PCI treatment (see Table 5). Thus, the seventh hypothesis failed to receive statistical support although the means display an interesting pattern (see Table 11). 104’ Table 11 Interaction of Age and Parent-Child Interaction (PCI) Treatment in Terms of the Dependent Variable - FORM PCI Treatment Age Parent-Child -Television Parent-Child -No Television Control Younger 2. 7a 2.9 3.2 Older 3.3 2.8 2.5 NOTE: Maximum score = 4; minimum = 1. Interaction not significant Dependent Var iable: Function I Hypothesis j3. For function, (a) the PCTV group ^performs significantly higher than the control group, whereas (b) the PCI group does not demonstrate a similar difference. Results. The first step involved in analyzing the effects of PCI treatment in terms of function was to look :at the overall main effect of PCI treatment in an appropriate analysis of variance (see Table 7). In doing i so, it is found that PCI treatment was found to be a significant main effect. The mean function scores for the three groups were somehow different (see Table 12). Next, separate comparisons of both treatment group means with the control group mean were made by simple jt tests (df = 14) [3]. The PCTV group differed significantly (t(14) = 3.16) from the control group whereas a comparison of the PCI and control groups (t(14) = .11) did not demonstrate a similar difference. Therefore, the eighth hypothesis was statistically supported. 3) The t tests were performed through use of an SPSS package available on a DEC10 on-line computer at the Engineering Computer Laboratory of the University of Southern California. 106' A Table 12 Comparison of Treatment Group Means on the Dependent Variable - FUNCTION Parent-Child Interaction Treatment Parent-Child -Television •Parent-Child Control -No Television 2 .9a* -2 . 2b 2.2 NOTE: Maximum score = 4; minimum = 1 aWhen compared to the Control, t (14) = 3.16 (p<.01) ^When compared to the Control, t (14) = .11 (n.s.) .*Overall main effect significance, p<.05 107 ; A Dependent Variable: Utterance I I ! Hypothesis 9. For utterance length, (a) the PCTV ,group produces significantly longer utterances than the control group, whereas (b) the PCI group does not demonstrate a similar difference. Results. An analysis of variance for utterance length showed a significant main effect due to PCI treatment (see Table 8). Following this discovery, group means were examined: PCTV had an average utterance length of 13.1, PCI averaged 5.1, and the control group achieved a 4.7 average length (Table 13). A comparison of the PCTV and control groups found a significant difference between the two means [4], There was no such difference between the PCI and the control group. Thus, the last hypothesis is supported in its entirety. The PCTV group produced significantly longer utterances than the control group while the PCI group did not likewise differ. 4) A t test (SPSS on DEC10 computer) was also used to determine equality here. A test of homogeneity of variances between the PCTV and the control groups was found significant (F(max) = 8.20, p < .001)— that is, the variances could not be pooled. Since the treatment group variances were heterogeneous, an adjusted degrees of freedom was used (df = 7.5, instead of df =14). 108 Table 13 Comparison of Treatment Group Means on the Dependent Variable - UTTERANCE LENGTH Parent-^-Child Interaction Treatment Parent-Child , Parent-Child Control -Television -No Television 13.la* 5.2 b 4.7 NOTE: No maximum length. aWhen compared to the Control, t (7.5) = 2.49 (p<.05). Since F (max) = 28.67 (pc.001), variances cannot be pooled. An adjusted df of 7.5 instead of 14 is used. b When compared to the Control, t (14) = .34 (n.s.) *Overall main effect significance, p<.05 109 'Summary of PCI Treatment Influences i , Reviewing the effect of PCI treatment on the three ;dependent variables indicates that group differences do result from a four-week treatment of various parent and child interaction sessions. Such a treatment is evidently influenced by age when considered in terms of the form of communicative behavior. On the other hand, function and utterance length appear to be more directly influenced by PCI treatment— that is, the PCTV group treatment resulted in significant differences on these dependent measures. Relationships Among the Dependent Variables In the review of the literature it was seen that the three dependent variables — form, function, and utterance length— were not independent of one another. To specify the relationship among these measures, it was suggested at the end of Chapter III that Pearson and partial correlations be determined. This was done and the results are indicated in Table 14. An overview indicates that utterance length and function are moderately correlated (r = .67), and form covaries somewhat less with these two measures (: r = .49 for both relationships). All zero-order correlations were 110 I i i i i Table 14 Zero- and First-Order Partial Correlations Among the Dependent Variables Correlations Zero-Order First-Order Variable Pair Form with Function .488* .252 Form with Utterance Length .486* .247 Function with Utterance Length .666** .562* NOTE: n = 24. *p<.01 **p<.001 111 significant whereas only the relationship of utterance length with function was significant among first-order ■correlations. 112 , CHAPTER V : DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS I i This final chapter starts with a review of the theoretical background and the implementation of the experiment. Findings relative to the nine hypotheses and the relationships among the dependent variables are outlined and discussed in light of previous research. The implications of the present study are viewed in terms of future research and policy recommendations. Overview of the Experiment Problem. This study investigates the ways in which a child's communicative performance in a television viewing situation is affected by changes in the televised context, and how this may be further affected by the child's previous experience with television. Young children's interaction with their environment, primarily through vocal play, contributes to their cognitive, language, and communication skills development. Mediated communication, such as television, is an increasingly large part of children's early experience. Although television viewing is more often a family activity, it is hardly social, and usually contributes little to the opportunity for discourse. Young children rely upon the context of a 113 .situation to establish their intended meanings, and there is minimal chance afforded the practice of this communication behavior in the television setting. The questions underlying the present experiment were whether (and how) a televised context serves as a source of influence when simultaneous with an adult and child dialogue, and whether a change in children's prior experience with a television setting would bring about a change in their rules of interaction for that setting as measured by their communicative performance. 1 Method. Three groups of low and low-middle socioeconomic preschool children (n = 24), aged 51 to 71 months, were selected from two inner-city preschools and underwent a one-month period of varied parent and child interaction. Experimental treatment for one group (PCTV) consisted of the parent talking to the child about what had been seen on television. Another group (PCI) talked about community experiences, and the third group (control) did not participate in a scheduled interaction. The children were differentiated by a median-split of age (59 months), resulting in an average of 54 months for the younger group, and 64 months for the older group. Immediately following the treatment period was a testing situation where the children were asked questions simultaneous with televised presentation of contexts, which were varied in dimensions of presence— timing equivalent to before and during, and relevance— congruency :of presentation with question. Responses were scored (according to three dependent measures: form— structural i .properties; function— answer quality; and utterance length— number of words. The data were analyzed through repeated measures analyses of variance, t tests, and correlations. Discussion of the Results The results of the present study are described ■according to three areas: differences among televised context conditions of testing, differences from PCI ■ treatment, and the relationships among the dependent var iables. Differences Among Televised-Context Conditions This was primarily a test of whether televised contexts influence a child's communicative performance as would be supposed from prior research which indicates that children are influenced in their behavior by what they see on television. Since young children are highly context dependent in their communicative performance, it was proposed that television serves as a potential influential source of context. Six hypotheses were stated regarding variations in the televised context and interactions 115: involving context upon one of three dependent variables. These three dependent variables resemble linguistic I ;dependent measures commonly found m the literature. » Following is each hypothesis and a discussion of the results: Hypothesis 1. For form, scores in the present contexts are greater than scores in the absent conditions Scores in the present context, on the average, were significantly greater than scores in the absent context [1]. Underlying the prediction made in the first hypothesis were the notions that young, and in particular lower socioeconomic status children are highly context dependent, and that without an appropriate context available, the subjects would find it difficult to encode ^a response. In addition, some responsibility for the lowering of scores in the absent condition may have come from the children "tuning out" before the probe was given Simultaneous referability appears to be preferable for answering a question by these children, as measured in terms of form. Hypothesis 2. For form, differences occur that represent the interaction of age with presence. The results were not significant. It was earlier 1) Use of terms like "significant" or "statistically significant" in this chapter, unless otherwise indicated, are equivalent to p < .05. asserted that age reflected experiential differences. Depending upon their degree of experience with the television context, the children should differ in their reliance upon what is displayed. The results show that the younger children scored the same on both the presence conditions whereas the older children appear to have scored slightly higher in the present context (as a gross, nonstatistical comparison). This suggests, although the interaction was not significant, that the older children ■may have been more affected (in terms of form scores) by the television presentation, and thus, the greater experience with television made it more salient as a context. Slightly older children in the older group might have resulted in a significant interaction. Hypothesis 3. For function, scores are greater in the relevant contexts than in the irrelevant contexts. The results indicated a statistically significant difference in the proposed direction. Apparently, the relevancy of a televised object is influential upon the adequacy of a simultaneous utterance. Considering the results and the highly context dependent nature of these children's communicative behaviors, it appears that the televised object, as well as the probe, assisted the children in providing answers. The irrelevant objects apparently confused or suggested wrong strategies to the children who could not conclude that these objects were 117, not relevant to the task. In terms of scoring, however, only the task demands determined what was functionally appropriate, and therefore, relevant. Hypothesis 4. For utterance length, responses made in the present condition are longer than those in the absent state. The fourth hypothesis received support in that responses in the present context were significantly longer than those in the absent context. Similar to the earlier concern posited in the first hypothesis (for form) that 'without a supporting context, the children would provide a minimal response, this also appears to be the case for utterance length. This appears to give additional support to the notion that an appropriate available context provides referability through “anchors" in the environment for encoding longer responses. Hypothesis 5. For utterance length, those responses made in the relevant context are longer than those responses reflecting the irrelevant context. The hypothesis was not statistically supported. It was presumed that the televised object would assist the child when relevant, and confuse the child (a result of hesitation in response) when irrelevant. The differences assumed this pattern; however, because it seems likely that the variability of confusion differed dramatically 118 (between subjects, relevance did not significantly : influence utterance length. j ' Hypothesis 6. For utterance length, differences occur that represent the interaction of age with context; an interaction with either presence or relevance or both •indicates such a difference. Some support for age interacting with context to produce length differences resulted. An interaction between age and presence for utterance length was found ; significant; other hypothesized interactions did not reach significance. It appears that the older children's performance differed according to the context whereas the younger children seemed hardly affected. Thus, the interaction was not symmetrical. This leads to similar conclusions to those regarding the second hypothesis and form. As the children get older, television acts as a source of information— that is, the children attend to television and process the televised stimuli based on prior experience (Perelle, 1975, 1976). In this way, it appears that younger children do not use television as a source of information simultaneous with an experimenter's questions whereas older children consider both as credible stimulus sources. These older children, however, still highly context dependent, react to the variations of context and appear to be incapable of going beyond their immediate context. I Summary of context variation effects. The six ihypotheses and results dealing with context variations [indicate that presence and relevance of televised objects influence preschool children’s subsequent communicative performance. Conditionally, overall results are congruent with previous research. The present research indicates that past research needs to be further classified according to measures reflecting form, utterance length, .and function. In answering the question of whether ;television is a source of context variation, a restriction on its use is required in regard to age. Apparently, as t a g e represents a measure of differences in prior experience with television, the researcher should be concerned with a child's previous experience with a medium and how this might impact upon his or her attention and abilities in using the medium. Differences in PCI Treatment Serving the purpose of ascertaining the effects of an intervention project of parent and child interaction on children's subsequent language performance, PCI treatment was considered. The following discusses the hypotheses relative to this experimental treatment. One hypothesis was given for each dependent variable. 120 Hypothesis 1_. For form, differences occur that represent the interaction of age with PCI treatment. Age did not significantly interact with PCI treatment, although, in the present study, it represents possibly a one-third greater amount^ of cumulative experience with television. The results, however, may be interesting for future research. For the younger children, the control group scored the highest on form, followed by the PCI group, and scoring lowest, the PCTV group. An opposite order was obtained with the older children— that is, from highest to lowest, PCTV, PCI, control. Another way of looking at these results is that the PCTV older children might have a higher average form score than the PCTV younger group, the age levels of the PCI groups might not be very different, and the control age groups might have scored opposite of the PCTV age groups, younger better than older. Since form differences due to age alone (in terms of the age differences in the present experiment) could not be expected, the apparent age differences must certainly reflect experiential and not developmental differences. In other words, the interaction might be viewed as a difference in age, but only in terms of the children's ability to cope with experiential changes (the degrees of obtrusiveness of the treatments). Whereas younger children might do best when left alone (less treatment), the older children perhaps ,are better able to cope with the changes manifested in the f ;PCI treatment. In conclusion, the question of whether i i ,'changes in rules of interaction resulting from treatments, like PCI treatment, depend upon the amount of previous experience with a setting or type of interaction remains interesting and unanswered. Hypothesis £[. For function, (a) the PCTV group performs significantly higher than the control group, whereas (b) the PCI group does not demonstrate a similar :difference. ' As hypothesized, the PCTV group significantly differed from the control group, whereas the PCI group did not similarly differ from the control group. It appears that the PCTV group used language that provided more instructional information than the control group. Since the PCI group did not show a similar difference from the control group, it cannot be said that parent and child interaction alone was responsible for the PCTV group's higher scores. This result, a mean of 2.9 for the PCTV group compared to 2.2 for each of the other two groups, indicates that the differences among responses were not a matter of degree but rather a difference in the kind of responses that were given by the children. Apparently, in a television setting, those children who have undergone a period of parent and child interaction about television provide responses that are functionally different and more 122' ^dequate than responses of children who have not had such ;a treatment. This suggests that for the promotion of I functional communicative behaviors in a television i setting, previous interaction about television predisposes the child in just such a way. Hypothesis For utterance length, (a) the PCTV group produces significantly longer utterances than the control group, whereas (b) the PCI group does not demonstrate a similar difference. Subjects in the PCTV group, on the average, produced significantly longer utterances than the control group. The PCI group, however, did not differ from the control group in terms of utterance length. Again, parent and child interaction alone cannot be said to be responsible for this communicative performance difference. The large differences that occurred indicate that the PCTV children were providing responses that were qualitatively, as well as quantitatively different than the other two PCI treatment groups. In both the eighth and ninth hypotheses, something lacking from PCI is available with PCTV. The present research suggests that television is a unique experience with a set of rules of interaction that normally stipulate quiescence from its participants. As indicated in prior research, a treatment such as PCTV should change communicative behavior in the television setting. The results indicate that this has been done. 123! Summary of PCI treatment effects. Overall, the ■results of the PCI treatment indicate that prior experience with television as a part of parent and child interaction results in significantly longer and more functional communicative behaviors in a television-related task situation. The question of age— as a reflection of further differences in prior experience with television— interacting with the PCI treatment, as measured by form, remains unanswered and an important Iquestion to pursue (as will be discussed as an implication for future research and policy). Relationships Among the Dependent Var iables The three dependent variables, form, function, and utterance length, were used to provide a finer discrimination of the language sample than one measure alone. Past research has indicated that form and function are somewhat independent of one another, and that utterance length varies accordingly. The purpose of the present analysis was to examine the relationship among these variables. First, it should be noted that the results of zero- and first-order correlations indicate in the present experiment that utterance length varies more closely with function than with form, and this relationship is stronger 124 ,than that between function and form. In terms of common :variance, utterance length and function share a unique 'variance separate from form of about 31%. Adding form to • this relationship gains about 14% variance or a total of around 45% shared variance among the measures. Evidently, the structure of a response is quite independent of fulfilling the functional demands of the question it ’presumably answers. In terms of experimental costs, these results suggest that the unique variance of form may be jworth the additional measurement it requires. Since ,function and utterance length each have less unique variance apart from all the dependent measures, use of both of these appears to be less cost-effective. Overall, however, the additional contribution each of the three dependent measures makes to the analysis of communicative performance in the present experiment outweighs the cost of using them. The relationships and uniqueness of the dependent variables can be further analyzed by viewing the hypothesized results of the present experiment (see Table 15). Form is hypothesized to vary with presence, presence and age, and PCI treatment and age. The results find only presence resulting in a significant interaction. Function differences are predicted and statistically supported for relevance and PCI treatment. Utterance length was tested and had supported effects of presence, presence and age, 125 Table 15 An Overview of the Relationships Among the Independent and Dependent Variables Dependent Variables Sources of Variance Form £ Function E Utterance Length E Parent-Child Interaction Treatment (PCI) < .05 < .05 Age PCI Treatment x Age (b) Presence < .05 < .05 Presence x PCI Treatment Presence x Age (a) < .05 Presence x PCI Treatment : x Age Relevance < .05 (b) Relevance x PCI Treatment (a) Relevance x Age (b) Relevance x PCI Treatment x Age Presence x Relevance (PR) PR x PCI Treatment PR x Age (b) PR x PCI Treatment x Age NOTE: Each relationship considered above is taken from an analysis of variance with repeated measures on one depen dent variable. Therefore, no partitioning of the depen dent variance is implied. ap<.10 kp>.10 for a hypothesized relationship 126; ian^ PCI treatment; not significant on utterance length were relevance alone and in interaction with age. This 'may be viewed more simply as predictions regarding I presence require a measure of form; relevance necessitates I a measure of function; and age as a reflection of experience is best measured by form. PCI treatment appears to influence overall performance in multiple ways and requires several measures, each providing different views of its effects. Finally, utterance length sometimes :reflects form and at other times, function. Therefore, while utterance length is a useful measure when there is no precision as to whether form or function is being measured, using it alone as an indicator of either may be faulty. In conclusion, the three dependent measures, as used in the present experiment, do represent substantially different criteria in regard to the tested independent variables. Form and function represent theoretically major differences as indicated by the minimal overlap in both the correlations and the hypotheses. Utterance length provides some unique variance as indicated in the correlations and is of some interest relative to the hypotheses. 127 ! Implications for Future Research J The proposed implications for future research are ;derived from two concerns: the questions posed in the present research and suggestions relative to the design of similar experiments. Implications Perived From the Results In this research, questions were asked about the use of a televised context's influence on communicative behavior, the impact of a treatment such as PCI treatment, and the implications of this research to other forms of media and telecommunication. Questions asked about the televised-context. Specifically, in the present research, it was asked whether televised contexts would significantly influence aspects of communicative performance: Would presentations of context variations on television result in behavioral influences similar to the effects of nontelevised context variations? The implication of this question is that in past research television has been shown to influence behavior, and that it may be possible to extend the scope of this influence to the communicative performance of young children. It has been shown that television can be used to present contexts and context variations that influence behavior, such as the effects caused by presence 128: and relevance, but there is one reservation. Televised ■presentations may vary in their potency of presented 1 ■stimuli— that is, the strength of differences among 1 contexts may not be equivalent to nonmediated presentations. Outright, two of the hypotheses and part of a third were not confirmed. The differences, although not significant, tended toward the hypothesized directions. These may be spurious results or one possible explanation is that the potency of the context variations was insufficient to produce the hypothesized differences. Although other explanations are possible (for example, ! subject characteristics or dependent measure problems), the question of whether the mediated presentation is equivalent to the live presentation is still warranted. Questions asked about the influence of treatment on communicative performance. The PCI treatment consisted of two variations: whether there was parent and child interaction, and whether the topic of conversation for this interaction was the child's television experience or another experience (for example, community experiences). Questions asked in the research relative to the effect of the treatment on various aspects of communicative performance included: What is the effect of parent and child interaction regardless of topic? What happens when the topic of one group's interaction is television and the setting in which the children are tested includes 129; .television? What is the influence of prior experience with television on the effect of the treatment? The !implications on future research of the answers to these i Questions bear upon aspects of media socialization and i media literacy, as well as the previous implication of television in the testing situation. The results of the present research indicate that parent and child interaction cannot be considered regardless of the topic. When tested in a television- 1 related setting, the combination of parent and child interaction and television results in the children's functional communicative behavior being quantitatively and qualitatively different from the other children. The present research argues that this difference is produced by a change in the type of rules of interaction that the children perceive and act upon. Also, age as it represents prior television experience is still possibly a factor to be considered, given the inconclusive results of the hypothesized interaction of age with PCI treatment. From the findings, generalizations follow that are indicated for future research: Young children's communicative behaviors may be easily influenced by modest changes in their norms of using media and other telecommunications. In lower socioeconomic status families and probably widespread in other socioeconomic 130 |levels, there is limited communicative performance about imedia. It appears likely that these behaviors are learned i !in the family, but may be modified as late as the early i school years. Perhaps it is the amount of previous experience with a medium, such as television, rather than a developmental function that determines how easily one can change in reacting to and using mediated communications. In any case, when research is aimed at language learning from television, the method of testing should be concerned with, and controlled for, the rules of interaction underlying communicative behavior in the television setting. Suggestions Relative to Experimental Design Several suggestions that bear upon the design of future research are tenable. First, in the present study, the use of repeated measures appears to have overcome the pitfalls of earlier research (for example, Helsabeck, 1971; Hopper, 1971) that ignored initial differences among subjects in their communicative behavior. As a second strength of the research, the design used more than one dependent measure making it easier to identify the impacts upon past research. Multiple dependent measures demonstrated that different relationships between the sources of context variation and the aspects of communicative performance existed. Also, the influence of 1311 treatment apparently was different depending upon whether there was an interest in form, or function and utterance length. These strengths of the present research should continue to be considered in and further refined in future research. On the other hand, there are several limitations in this study that should be overcome in subsequent research. For example, although without Project on Television in Early Childhood Education population and treatment this experiment could not have been completed at reduced cost, it did have several disadvantages. First, the PCI treatment could have been more precise in regard to the presumed treatment effect— that is, a treatment that specifically differed in terms of existing rules of interaction and the degree to which they were incorporated into parent and child interaction is suggested. This might have required a different overall treatment, as well as a lengthier period of interaction. Second, the size and nature of the subject pool did not permit comparisons of socioeconomic status or other sources of plausible influence upon young children's communicative behaviors. This limitation restricts the generalizations that can be made from the present research. It would also be interesting to view a wider range of ages and to obtain measures of family media-related communicative styles to resolve the question of developmental versus experientially-based influences on children's 1 communicative performance. Finally, testing in additional ; settings and with other media is vital. While this i I ;research relied upon past research to draw comparisons, stronger arguments could be made with testing of effects in settings other than the one presumably affected. In addition, using other media is necessary to realize the extent of these effects. Pol icy Implications Two policy implications are derived from the present research. These will be stated as concerns rather than in the form of recommendations. The research is still inconclusive regarding exact statements. The Role and Responsibility of Parents and Significant Others 1• Adult and child interaction about television (and perhaps other media) will activate the related experience, at least in terms of communicative performance. It has been seen dramatically that a treatment of parent and child interaction on the topic of television significantly ^changes the type of functional communicative behaviors of young children. While this change may be limited to only those children from families with previously minimal means 133 of communication, it appears likely that this type of family may be widely found. In regard to particular types of television viewing, for commercial television viewing, where there is no intended instructional content, increased interaction should create a learning experience both from the activated communicative behavior and the benefits derived from such behavior, such as asking questions and receiving answers about content. Educational television may likewise be augmented but with the increased likelihood of the children learning the intended instruction. In some cases, financial support for educational programs may be spent more wisely on increasing family participation in the viewing of a show rather than in techniques for finding stimuli that increase eye contact. 2* Media- and telecommunications-related communicative performance is influenced by rules of social behavior. There is a need to assess the nature of these rules and what parents can do in further modifying their children's media behavior. Control over children's media behavior, part of which is communicative performance, is most definitely a recent concern. From the fall of 1975, until it was declared by U.S. District Judge Ferguson in November 1976, as an infringement of First Amendment rights, the "family viewing hour" was the Federal Communication Commission's, the National Association of broadcasters', and the three major network broadcasters' jattempt to regulate what children viewed on television. This action was very likely a reaction to criticism of too much sex and violence on American television. While the criticism may have been valid, the solution did not address the problem. Regulation of children's television viewing (and other media use) was the problem, and it is the responsibility of each family to establish guidelines for use, particularly where large scale solutions impose ^restraints on what others may view or use. Understanding the rules of communicative behavior underlying media use is one way that this problem might be addressed at the correct level of intervention in a democratic society. 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APPENDIXES APPENDIX A PROJECT ON TELEVISION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION EXPERIMENTAL MANIPULATIONS AND TREATMENT GROUP DIFFERENCES Table A Project on Television in Early Childhood Education Experimental Manipulations and Treatment Group Differences Experimental Manipulations PCI Treatment Parent Parent -Child -Child -TV -Mo TV Groups Control Pretest taping session yes yes yes Treatment meeting which included: - prequestionnaire yes yes yes - videotape demonstration yes yes yes - television as topic yes no no - community events as topic no yes no - diary handed out yes yes no Twelve sessions using kits in the home over a period of four weeks for a minimum of 10 minutes per session; filling out diaries after each session3 yes yes no Telephone three times over the four-week period to encourage continued participation and provide assistance yes yes no Interim tea for group yes yes no Posttest taping session yes yes yes Posttest questionnaire yes yes yes f > aEach interaction group was asked to incorporate differ ent themes into these sessions. The toy kits were the same although the diaries differed somewhat (reference was made to television for the TV group, and to community events and themes in the non-TV group). 156 APPENDIX B EXPERIMENTAL CONTROL: NUMBER OF PROBES EXAMINED FOR BIAS BY ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE WITH REPEATED MEASURES Table B Analysis of Variance of the Number of Experimenter's Probes for Each Subject Source Error Term Tested Against df m s. . : F BETWEEN SUBJECTS PCI treatment (PCI) 2 .198 .162 Age 1 .003 .002 PCI x Age 2 2 .323 1.899 ERROR A (Subjects within (PCI x Age)) 18 1.223 WITHIN SUBJECTS Presence (P) 1 .023 .075 P x PCI 2 .094 .299 P x Age 1 .023 .075 P x PCI x Age 2 .031 .100 ERROR B (P x ERROR A) 18 .313 Relevance (R) 1 .940 1.141 R x PCI 2 .948 1.151 R x Age 1 .211 .256 R x PCI x Age 18 .406 .493 ERROR C (R x ERROR A) P X R 1 .128 .421 P x R X PCI 2 .073 .241 P x R x Age 1 .023 .077 P x R x PCI x Age 2 .219 .722 ERROR D (P x R x ERROR A) 18 .303 Table C Number of Experimenter's Probes for Each Subject PCI TREATMENT GROUPS Parent--Child TV Parent--Child No-TV i Control Combined RELEVANCE3-: R I C 1 R I C 1 R I C R I C AGE I PRESENCE I Younger Present 1.8 2.0 1.9 1 2.5 2.1 2.3 1 i 2.0 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1 Absent 1.9 2.0 1.9 1 2.1 2.4 2.3 1 i 2.1 2.4 2.3 2.0 2.3 2.1 Combined 1.8 2.0 1.9 1 2.3 2.3 2.3 1 _ i . 2.1 2.3 2.2 2.1 2.2 2.1 Older Present 2.1 2.8 2.4 1 2.0 1.8 1.9 1 t 1.9 2.3 2.1 2.0 2.3 2.1 Absent 2.0 3.1 2.6 1 1.9 1.6 1.8 1 2.0 2.1 2.1 2.0 2.3 2.1 Combined 2.1 2.9 2.5 1 1.9 1.7 1.8 1 i 1.9 2.2 2.1 2.0 2.3 2.1 Combined Present 1.9 2.4 2.2 1 2.3 1.9 2.1 1 i 1.9 2.2 2.1 2.0 2.2 2.1 Absent 2.0 2.6 2.3 1 2.0 2.0 2.0 1 i 2.1 2.3 2.2 2.0 2.3 2.1 Combined 2.0 2.5 2.2 1 2.1 2.0 2.0 ' i 2.0 2.2 2.1 2.0 2.2 2.1 NOTE: Numbers have been rounded-off in computations. aR = « Relevant; I = Irrelevant; C = Combined <ji to APPENDIX C CODING PROCEDURES AND EXAMPLES Table D :FOKM Coding Procedures and Examples SCORING CRITERIA Is the response? Score Examples a) an exclamation 1 "ah"; "oh" b) a prepositional phrase only 1 "like this"; "with a friend"; "in a book" c) a negative response without a verb 1 "no" d) a verb (not an action verb) 2 "ya need that ruff part"; "dat's a bed" e) a repetition of the probe verb only 2 "look"; "sleep"; "cut"; "sit"; "draw"; "eat" "play"; "ride"; f) a negative response without an action verb 2 "I don't know" g) a new action verb 3 "write"; "throw"; "you read" . h) i) a probe verb but with a new object a negative response with an action or 3 "cut orange"; "look at all the pictures" probe verb 3 "I can't answer"; "I don't read"; "don't cut" j) t i k) a new action verb and an object a negative response with an action or probe verb and followed by an object or 4 "throw it"; "turn the pages"; dip it in your soup and you "you pick it up and eat it" 1 prepositional phrase 4 "I don't ride no bicycle"; "I car" don't sleep in a ( —1 < T i H Table E FUNCTION Coding Procedures and Examples SCORING CRITERIA Does the response? Score Examples a) not answer the question "How?" 1 "ya eat cereal" (answers "What?"); "when you want' b) not answer the question specifically 1 to look on it you can look in it" ("When?") "I read a book everyday ..." (to "draw" probe) c) not answer the question specifically because interference object used 1 "when you cut with a scissors you don't have to d) provide a minimal negative statement and does not meet above criteria 1 cut hard" (scissors interference for knife) "no"; "I don't know" i answer the question "How?" 2 "sit, just sit"; "you ride a bicycle"; "ya go f) use a term such as, "like this" 2 to sleep" "like dis"; "like that"; "this is how" g) provide a new thing or action 3 "with your hands"; "with your eyes" (new things); h) provide a negative statement that is question specific 3 "open it and close it"; "throw it" (new action) "I don't know how to sleep in a car" i) i provide directions by stating a need and an action 4 "first you get some food and then you cut" j) provide directions by suggesting at least three actions 4 "kick it, throw it, and catch it"; "ya hold the fork like this, get the knife, and cut" ( - ■ CTi NJ Table F UTTERANCE LENGTH'Coding Procedures and Examples SCORING CRITERIA Counting 1) Words and stand-alone sounds are counted. ■ 2) Do not count any items prior to the completion of a probe. 3) A response utterance is a continuous vocal statement uninter rupted by an experimenter's statement (except a "mmmm") or by a 2-second pause not followed by an "And." (See Selection #3.) 4) Although a response may continue, if a topic shift occurs (away from some aspect relative to the initial theme), .counting ceases. Selection 1) Select the longest utterance that is addressed to the probe question. 2) If two utterances are of equal length and both address the probe question, use a random selection procedure for picking the scored utterance. 3) Exact repetitions of utterances should be considered as separate even if they appear to be connected. Examples (Total count) "throw it" (2) "Pic the spoon up and put it in your mouth then (1 sec.,pause) ah you eat food up" (16) "Like this (1 sec. pause) Look at all the pictures" (7) "When you throw the ball and you throw the ball way up into the sky, on the roof, then nobody can get it. (3 sec.) And with somebody finally up on the roof then they'll throw it down on the dirt and then it, then there might be air in it, some air in there. (2 sec.) And a and a car might run it over, the ball might, and the air might come out the ball" (73) 163 APPENDIX D DEPENDENT MEASURES' MEAN TABLES Table G FORM Score Means PCI TREATMENT GROUPS Parent--Child TV Parent--Child No-TV i Control Combined RELEVANCE3; R I C 1 R I C 1 R I C R I C AGE ' i PRESENCE i Younger Present 2.3 3.0 2.6 1 3.0 2.9 2.9 1 i 3.4 3.1 3.3 2.9 3.0 2.9 Absent 2.6 2.9 2.8 1 2.8 2.9 2.9 1 i 3.1 3.0 3.1 2.8 2.9 2.9 Combined 2.4 2.9 2.7 1 2.9 2.9 2.9 1 i 3.3 3.1 3.2 2.9 3.0 2.9 Older Present 3.3 3.3 3.5 1 3.0 2.9 2.9 1 i 2.9 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.1 3.1 Absent 3.4 2.9 3.1 1 2.6 2.9 2.8 1 i 2.3 2.1 2.2 2.8 2.6 2.7 Combined 3.3 3.3 3.3 1 2.8 2.9 2.8 1 i 2.6 2.4 2.5 2.9 2.9 2.9 i ! Combined Present 2.8 3.4 3.1 1 3.0 2.9 2.9 1 i 3.1 2.9 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 i Absent 3.0 2.9 2.9 1 2.7 2.9 2.8 1 i 2.7 2.6 2.6 2.8 2.8 2.8 Combined 2.9 3.1 3.0 1 2.9 2.9 2.9 1 i 2.9 2.7 2.8 2.8 2.8 2.8 NOTE: Numbers have been rounded-off in computations. aR = Relevant; I = Irrelevant; C = Combined Table H FUNCTION Score Means PCI TREATMENT GROUPS Parent--Child TV Parent--Child No-TV Control Combined RELEVANCE3: R I C ‘ R I c 1 R I C R I C AGE PRESENCE i Younger Present 3.1 2.5 2.8 1 2.0 2.3 2.1 1 i 2.9 2.3 2.6 2.7 2.3 2.5 Absent 3.4 2.6 3.0 ' 2.3 1.9 2.1 1 i 2.5 1.9 2.2 2.7 2.1 2.4 Combined 3.3 2.6 2.9 ' 2.1 2.1 2.1 1 I 2.7 2.1 2.4 2.7 2.2 2.5 Older Present 3.5 1.9 2.7 1 2.5 2.3 2.4 ' i 2.3 1.9 2.1 2.8 2.0 2.4 Absent 3.8 2.6 3.2 ' 2.4 1.9 2.1 ' i 2.4 1.6 2.0 2.8 2.0 2.4 Combined 3.6 2.3 2.9 ' 2.4 2.1 2.3 ' i 2.3 1.8 2.0 2.8 2.0 2.4 Combined Present 3.3 2.2 2.8 ' 2.3 2.3 2.3 ' i 2.6 2.1 2.1 2.7 2.2 2.2 Absent 3.6 2.6 3.1 ' 2.3 1.9 2.1 ' I 2.4 1.8 2.1 2.8 2.1 2.4 Combined 3.4 2.4 2.9 ' 2.3 2.1 2.2 ' I 2.5 1.9 2.2 2.7 2.1 2.4 i NOTE: Numbers have been rounded-off in computations. aR = Relevant; I = Irrelevant; C = Combined I I -1 cn Table I UTTERANCE LENGTH Means PCI TREATMENT GROUPS Parent-Child TV Parent-Child No-TV Control Combined i i RELEVANCE3: R I C 1 R I C 1 R I C R I C AGE ' 1 I i PRESENCE i I Younger Present 15.1 10.8 12.9 1 i 5.9 4.6 5.3 1 i 4.6 5.3 4.9 8.5 6.9 7.7 Absent 9.5 17.2 13.4 ' i 4.8 3.1 3.9 1 i 7.4 4.8 6.1 7.2 8.4 7.8 Combined 12.3 14.0 13.2 1 i 5.3 3.9 4.6 1 i 6.0 5.0 5.5 7.9 7.6 7.8 Older Present 17.3 13.7 15.5 ' i 7.3 6.6 6.9 1 i 7.0 2.6 4.8 10.5 7.7 9.1 Absent 12.8 8.4 10.6 1 i 4.8 4.1 4.4 1 i 3.5 2.4 2.9 7.0 5.0 6.0 Combined 15.0 11.0 13.0 1 i 6.0 5.4 5.7 1 i 5.3 2.5 3.9 8.8 6.3 7.5 Combined Present 16.2 12.2 14.2 ' i 6.6 5.6 6.1 1 i 5.8 3.9 4.9 9.5 7.3 8.4 Absent 11.1 12.8 12.0 1 i 4.8 3.6 4.2 1 i 5.4 3.6 4.5 7.1 6.7 6.9 Combined 13.7 12.5 13.1 1 i 5.7 4.6 5.1 1 i 5.6 3.8 4.7 8.3 7.0 7.6 I NOTE: Numbers have been rounded-off in computations. aR = Relevant; I = Irrelevant; C = Combined

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Asset Metadata

Creator Epstein, Robert Henry (author)

Core Title Communicative performance with media: Effects and implications of television and adult-child interaction on preschooler's language

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication Theory and Research

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag mass communications,OAI-PMH Harvest,psychology, developmental,Speech Communication

Language English

Advisor Williams, Frederick (committee chair), Smart, Margaret C. (committee member), Stanford, Monty C. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-692997

Unique identifier UC11344159

Identifier DP22332.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-692997 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier DP22332.pdf

Dmrecord 692997

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Epstein, Robert Henry

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA