Adolescent responses toward a new technology: first associations, information seeking and affective responses to ecogenomics.

This paper reports on an exploratory study among adolescents (N = 752) who were introduced to the emerging technology of ecogenomics for the first time. An online survey focused on their associations with the term ecogenomics, their planned information seeking behaviors if they were to acquire information about the new technology, and their first affective responses toward ecogenomics after having read some introductory information about it. Adolescents were found to associate ecogenomics most frequently with economy. Although the Internet was the most popular medium to be used in their planned information seeking behaviors, books and science communication professionals were judged as the most trustworthy information sources. After having read the introductory information about ecogenomics most adolescents reported positive affective responses toward the new technology.

Source confusion as an explanation of cultivation: a test of the mechanisms underlying confusion of fiction with reality on television.

Cultivation studies have found evidence that heavy television viewers adopt a world view congruent with how the world is portrayed in fictional television programs. An explanation is that viewers may remember fictional TV stories as realistic stories or news (fiction-to-news confusion). Until now, fiction-to-news confusion was found only if at least a week evolved between watching TV and asking viewers what was remembered. The present study conducted with a purposive sample of students and employees of a college in The Netherlands (N=96; M age = 28.6 yr., SD = 10.9) indicates that fiction-to-news confusions can also occur almost immediately after watching. In addition, whereas earlier research suggests that fiction-to-news confusions are associated with heavy viewing, i.e., more confusion when more hours per day are spent on TV viewing in leisure time, and faulty memory, the present study more specifically suggests that participants make many fiction-to-news confusions when they are exposed to relatively many fictional TV fragments that contain threatening, violent events.

Physiological reactions of preschoolers to fear-inducing film clips: effects of temperamental fearfulness and quality of the parent-child relationship.

This study investigates young children's fright reactions induced by television. The central question concerns the degree to which the impact can be predicted by temperamental fearfulness and the quality of the parent-child relationship. Using a procedure for recording simultaneously skin conductance (SCL) and heart rate variability (RMSSD), 78 3- and 4-year-olds were shown two brief TV film episodes (one fear-inducing and one emotionally neutral). The children responded to fear-inducing film stimuli with an increase in SCL-reactivity and a decrease in RMSSD-reactivity. Furthermore, temperamentally more fearful children showed most electrodermal reactivity when their relationship with the parent was less harmonious. More fearful children were more susceptible to the quality of the relationship with their parent, which provides support for the differential susceptibility hypothesis.

The formal pace of Sesame Street over 26 years.

Television producers often use a high rate in the succession of visual and auditory features in their programs to attract the attention of viewers. In this study an attempt was made to measure the formal pace of television programs by scoring the rates of an extensive set of formal visual and auditory characteristics. Sesame Street was chosen as a focal point because this educational program--with its high pace--is very successful in its competition with the majority of commercial programs from which children can choose to watch at home. The analyzed material consisted of 49 Dutch episodes of Sesame Street broadcast between 1977 and 2003. The formal pace characteristics of separate program items from Sesame Street could be reliably established. Factor analysis indicated that clear pace factors were (a) "editing," consisting of a frequent use of different types of shots (total shots, medium shots, and close-ups) combined with a large number of cuts and (b) speech rate. Over a period of 26 years, the pace of editing increased: the mean number of cuts increased from about 4 to 8 per minute. The mean speech rate decreased from 175 to 139 words per minute.