ts regard as destructive and antisocial. Research has that infants as young as 14 months old demonstrably observe and incorporate behavior seen on television.
Studies have found that the average American pre-school child watches more than 27 hours of television each week (Centerwall, 1992, p. 3059). Through ages three and four, most children are unable to distinguish fact from fantasy on television, weather or not the children receive any adult coaching. In the minds of young children, television is a source of entirely factual information regarding how the world works. There are no limits to the credulity of young children.
As children get older, they come to a clearer understanding of television programming; however, the earliest and deepest impressions of these children are established at an age when they still see television as a factual source of information about the outside world (Centerwall, 1992, p. 3060). In that television-based world, violence is common, and the commission of violence is "generally powerful, exciting, charismatic, and effective. In later life, serious violence is most likely to erupt at moments of severe stressùand it is precisely at such moments that adolescents and adults are most likely to revert to their earliest, most visceral sense of the role of violence in society and in personal behavior" (Centerwall, 1993, p. 57).
In 1973, a remote rural community in Canada acquired television for the first time (Williams, 1986, p. 5). Researchers from the University of British Columbia investigated the effect of television on the children of this community by comparing their behaviors to those of two similar towns that had had television for several years. Forty-five first- and second-grade students in the three towns were observed for rates of inappropriate physical aggression before television was introduced into the target community. Two years later, the same forty-five children were observ...