Com 250 Final 2

Front 1

orientation reaction (OR)

Back 1

the most basic form of attention, attracts us to movement or sudden changes in our environment.

Front 2

Children and OR

Back 2

When a child begins to watch TV, the child’s OR with regard to the TV stimulus begins to habituate.

Television producers must manipulate the child’s OR in order to maintain his or her attention to the TV screen.

Formal features of television production (e.g., cuts, zooms, fades, pans, slow motion, animation, morphing, etc.), can be used to maintain attention via manipulating the OR.

Some TV shows, cartoons, and commercials aimed as young children maintain attention via such formal features.

Front 3

Characteristics of preschool television viewers:

Back 3

Some have difficulty distinguishing between essential and peripheral information in shows, and hence have trouble understanding plots, causal sequences, consequences, and motives.

Some have difficulty understanding formal features of television production such as morphing.

Front 4

Two developmental stages of interest to mass communication researchers (from Dr. Jean Piaget, a major theorist):

Back 4

preoperations (approximately ages 2-6); preoperational children think perceptually

concrete operations (approximately ages 7-11); concrete-operational children think abstractly

Front 5

Preoperational thought has two major characteristics:

Back 5

centration & concreteness

Front 6

concreteness

Back 6

the tendency to react to things as they appear in immediate, egocentric perception without appreciating that a substance can take different forms (e.g., water, ice, steam)

Front 7

centration

Back 7

the tendency to center attention on a single, striking feature of an object (e.g., height, color)

Front 8

How does a researcher know if a child is pre- or concrete-operational?

Back 8

A concrete-operational child understands that a quantity (liquid or solid) can remain the same while changing in appearance.

Preoperational children do not yet understand this.

Front 9

The Incredible Hulk

Back 9

Prediction: Preoperational children will center on visual depictions while concrete-operational children will respond to plot development in a scene in which a normal man transforms into a green incredible hulk.

Result: Pre were afraid after transf.
Concrete were less afraid after trans.

Front 10

The Grandmother and the Witch

Back 10

Prediction: Preoperational children will center on surface features in a story about a woman described as “kind” or “cruel” and depicted as “grandmotherly” or “witchlike.”

Front 11

One______ use rational arguments to comfort a preoperational child who is frightened by a media depiction.

The best course of action is simply ____

Back 11

cannot successfully

to remove the child from the frightening depiction.

Front 12

Two subgroups of citizens receive special protection from the Federal Trade Commission

Back 12

children

terminally ill adults

Front 13

Some specific issues in advertising directed at children:

Back 13

parent-child conflict arising from premium offers

child unhappiness arising from exaggerated performance expectations of some toys

Front 14

Certain advertising techniques objected to by consumers, including

Back 14

hosts of television programs targeted at children also serving as advertising spokespersons

advertising disclaimers that young children do not understand (e.g., “some assembly required”)

Front 15

Regulatory interventions include:

Back 15

program-commercial separators

plain-language disclaimers

Front 16

The negative correlation between time spent viewing TV and verbal academic achievement (reading comprehension and vocabulary) is ________than the negative correlation between time spent viewing TV and quantitative academic achievement (mathematics).

Back 16

stronger

Front 17

Media cultivation

Back 17

Dr. George Gerbner
an agricultural metaphor that describes the consequences of watching television over a long period of time.

Front 18

Key assumptions underlying media cultivation

Back 18

Ritual viewing: We graze through the TV channels

Assembly-line production: Television programs feature consistent themes and characterizations

Front 19

mainstreaming

Back 19

occurs when the content of television programming fails to correspond with a heavy viewer’s real-world experiences

Watching television is said to pull such viewers into the dominant ideological mainstream of televised viewpoints.

Front 20

A research example of mainstreaming:

Back 20

How we perceive our overall financial situation might be due, in part, to how much TV we watch regularly.
Heavy users think they are just like everyone else, regardless of their financial situation

Front 21

resonance

Back 21

Dr. Gerbrner
occurs when heavy viewers of TV see depictions that conform to their everyday lives and hence are highly salient.

In essence, they get a “double dose” of certain messages.

Front 22

Criticism of Dr. George Gerbner’s work on media cultivation:

Back 22

what exactly is a heavy viewer?
not to define heavy viewers in terms of an absolute, specified amount of time. average viewing for that particular group.


How, exactly, does watching television affect viewers?
pull them into the mainstream, or push them out “to the edge” when television content resonates with personal experience?

mainstreaming and resonance are irrefutable from a scientific standpoint.

Front 23

Empirical generalizations drawn from cultivation research:

Back 23

small but consistent relationships between TV viewing and various social indicators (e.g., fear of criminal victimization, fear of being sold contaminated food) that could reasonably be described as media cultivation.

Front 24

George Gerbner's important quote

Back 24

Whoever tells the stories of a culture...controls that culture (Dr. George Gerbner)

Front 25

technological determinism describes

Back 25

the influence of dominant message-distribution systems (e.g., printing, television, Internet) on the ways people obtain information.