Abstract
The present study examined children's cognitive engagement with television as a function of the continuity of central or incidental content and whether this varied with age and clinical status. In Experiment 1, 9- to 11-year-old children's response times on a secondary task were slower the later a probe occurred in a sequence of central events, and response times predicted recall. Experiment 2 extended these results to 6- to 8-year-old children. Experiment 3 revealed that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) failed to show the pattern consistently observed for comparison children. The results support the hypothesis that typically developing children build a representation during viewing that reflects the causal structure of the televised story but that this skill is deficient in 4- to 9-year-old children with ADHD. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1206-1219 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Developmental Psychology |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2006 |
Keywords
- ADHD
- Attention
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
- Cognitive engagement
- Response times
- Secondary probe
- Story comprehension
- Television viewing
- Typically developing children
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Demography
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Life-span and Life-course Studies