DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY: CHILD PYC4805 ASSIGNMENT 3 2021.

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY: CHILD PYC4805 ASSIGNMENT 3 2021. In the past 2 decades, media has undergone a “revolutionary change” in the lives of children (Berk, 2013). On average, children spend 7.5 hours in front of some form of media per day (Berk, 2013). Media use escalates from childhood to early adolescence due to the increased availability and exposure to television and music on cell phones, MP3 players and computers (Berk, 2013). Ongoing research argues the positives and negatives of television use. This essay is aimed at showing the negatives of watching television outweigh the positives due to the availability of other medium that are more beneficial. 2. DISCUSSION 2.1POSITIVES In the past two decades, television shows have evolved to include more educational programs and shows that are aimed at enriching children. This may be through educational shows that promote general knowledge, the environment and educational content such as numeracy and literacy. One such show is Sesame Street. Sesame street is an educational programme that airs in over 130 countries worldwide (Mares & Pan, 2013). A study conducted by (Mares & Pan, 2013) showed that overall, exposure to Sesame Street had significant positive results and children that watched Sesame Street performed better than those who did not (Mares & Pan, 2013). Children learned about letters, numbers, shapes and sizes as well as science, the environment, culture, social interaction and health and safety (Mares & Pan, 2013). Watching Sesame Street resulted in higher grades, reading skills and more value placed on academic achievement and reading books (Berk, 2013). This study was conducted in the lower socio-economic status category as well as higher, however both categories yielded the same positive results (Mares & Pan, 2013). Sesame Street was created to foster learning through the use of different medium such as puppets and humans to teach general knowledge, emotional and social understanding as well as social skills (Berk, 2013). Educational programs like Sesame Street have been linked to improvement in early literacy and math skills in addition to academic progress in primary school (Berk, 2013). Sesame Street also fostered more make believe play in younger children and in so caused their imaginations to develop (Berk, 2013). Downloaded by: NurseKims | Distribution of this document is illegal Downloaded by: NurseKims | Distribution of this document is illegal S - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides S - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides 5 Recent studies have shown the positive effects of prosocial media and its encouragement of prosocial behaviour (Prot, Gentile, Anderson, Suzuki, Swing, Lim & Liau, 2014). Such prosocial media include television shows, video games and music lyrics (Prot et al, 2014). According to Gentile et al (2009), greater use of video games resulted in more frequent prosocial behaviours, cooperation and sharing (Prot et al, 2014). These prosocial behaviours increased over three to four months (Prot et al, 2014). Greitemeyer & Osswald (2010) also yielded results which stated that prosocial video games caused children to be more likely to help pick up a fallen pencil, agree to participate in further research studies and come to the aid of a female experimenter being harassed by an ex-boyfriend (Prot et al, 2014). These two studies concluded that greater exposure to prosocial media resulted in more frequent prosocial behaviours with empathy as a mediator. Empathy was used to compare the effects of prosocial media and violent media due to it being a short-term effect of prosocial media (Prot et al, 2014). Results showed that prosocial media lead to more prosocial behaviours indirectly through the effects on empathy and violent media exposure resulted in less prosocial behaviours through its indirect effect on empath. This means that as stated above, prosocial media lead to prosocial behaviours and decreased aggression but violent media lead to desensitisation and increased aggression because of a change in attitudes and beliefs (Prot et al, 2014). These findings can be used to conclude that media can significantly alter important interpersonal behaviours in both positive and negative ways and that media is a powerful teacher, when used in and exposed to in the correct way (Prot et al, 2014). Television viewing has been associated with attention deficits in younger children with manifestation in primary school years in a few recent studies. These studies argue that certain factors should be considered when deciding whether television has more positive or negative effects (Foster & Watkins, 2010). These factors include the duration of television watched, the content, with whom these programs are watched as well as how they are watched, that being, whether it is restricted and monitored or not (Foster & Watkins, 2010). These are important factors to be considered as television has been seen to have an effect on cognitive and emotional development as well as children’s ability to exercise self-control and maintain focus (Foster & Watkins, 2010). Results of these studies concluded that the risk of Downloaded by: NurseKims | Distribution of this document is illegal Downloaded by: NurseKims | Distribution of this document is illegal S - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides S - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides 6 attention deficits is present but only in dire circumstances where children spend more than seven house per day in front of the television (Foster & Watkins, 2010). Reasonable hours did not appear to be detrimental (Foster & Watkins, 2010). In recent years, there has been an increase in the amount of television watched. On average, one year old children watch 2.2 hours per day, three year olds watch 3.6 hours per day and this number increases exponentially during early adolescence. More television watched results in more exposure to information consequently increasing the chances of children processing and retaining the information and thereafter replaying the learned behaviours (Foster & Watkins, 2010). Overall, television does have positive effects but under certain parameters and circumstances.