Making the moral of the story stick − a media psychologist explains the research behind ‘Sesame Street,’ ‘Arthur’ and other children’s TV
This article originally appearded on The Conversation on February 23, 2024.
To adult viewers, educational media content for children, such as “Sesame Street” or “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” may seem rather simplistic. The pacing is slow, key themes are often repeated and the visual aspects tend to be plain.
However, many people might be surprised to learn about the sheer amount of research that goes into the design choices many contemporary programs use.
For more than a decade, I have studied just that: how to design media to support children’s learning, particularly in moral development. My research, along with the work of many others, shows that children can learn important developmental and social skills through media.
History of research on children’s media
Research on how to design children’s media to support learning is not new.
When “Sesame Street” debuted in November 1969, it began a decadeslong practice of testing its content before airing it to ensure children learned the intended messages of each episode and enjoyed watching it. Some episodes included messages notoriously difficult to teach to young children, including lessons about death, divorce and racism.
Researchers at the Sesame Workshop hold focus groups at local preschools where participating children watch or interact with Sesame content. They test the children on whether they are engaged with, pay attention to and learn the intended message of the content. If the episode passes the test, then it moves on to the next stage of production.
If children do not learn the intended message, or are not engaged and attentive, then the episode goes back for editing. In some cases, such as a 1992 program designed to teach children about divorce, the entire episode is scrapped. In this case, children misunderstood some key information about divorce. “Sesame Street” did not include divorce in its content until 2012.
Designing children’s media
With help from the pioneering research of “Sesame Street,” along with research from other children’s television shows both in the industry and in academia, the past few decades have seen many new insights on how best to design media to promote children’s learning. These strategies are still shaping children’s shows today.
For example, you may have noticed that some children’s television characters speak directly to the camera and pause for the child viewer at home to yell out an answer to their question. This design strategy, known as participatory cues, is famously used by the shows “Blue’s Clues” and “Dora the Explorer.” Researchers found that participatory cues in TV are linked to increased vocabulary learning and content comprehension among young children. They also increase children’s engagement with the educational content of the show over time, particularly as they learn the intended lesson and can give the character the correct answer.
You may have also noticed that children’s media often features jokes that seem to be aimed more at adults. These are often commentary about popular culture that require context children might not be aware of or involve more complex language that children might not understand. This is because children are more likely to learn when a supportive adult or older sibling is watching the show alongside them and helping explain or connect it to the child’s life. Known as active mediation, research has shown that talking about the goals, emotions and behaviors of media characters can help children learn from them and even improve aspects of their own emotional and social development.
Programs have also incorporated concrete examples of desired behaviors, such as treating a neurodiverse character fairly, rather than discussing the behaviors more abstractly. This is because children younger than about age 7 struggle with abstract thinking and may have difficulty generalizing content they learned from media and applying it to their own lives.
Research on an episode of “Arthur” found that a concrete example of a main character experiencing life through the eyes of another character with Asperger’s syndrome improved the ability of child viewers to take another person’s perspective. It also increased the nuance of their moral judgments and moral reasoning. Just a single viewing of that one episode can positively influence several aspects of a child’s cognitive and moral development.
Teaching inclusion through media
One skill that has proven difficult to teach children through media is inclusivity. Multiple studies have shown that children are more likely to exclude others from their social group after viewing an episode explicitly designed to promote inclusion.
For example, an episode of “Clifford the Big Red Dog” involved Clifford and his family moving to a new town. The townspeople initially did not want to include Clifford because he was too big, but they eventually learned the importance of getting to know others before making judgments about them. However, watching this episode did not make children more likely to play with or view disabled or overweight children favorably.
Based on my own work, I argue that one reason inclusivity can be difficult to teach in children’s TV may be due to how narratives are structured. For example, many shows actually model antisocial behaviors during the first three-quarters of the episode before finally modeling prosocial behaviors at the end. This may inadvertently teach the wrong message, because children tend to focus on the behaviors modeled for the majority of the program.
My team and I conducted a recent study showing that including a 30-second clip prior to the episode that explains the inclusive message to children before they view the content can help increase prosocial behaviors and decrease stigmatization. Although this practice might not be common in children’s TV at the moment, adult viewers can also fill this role by explaining the intended message of inclusivity to children before watching the episode.
Parenting with media
Children’s media is more complex than many people think. Although there is certainly a lot of media out there that may not use study-informed design practices, many shows do use research to ensure children have the best chance to learn from what they watch.
It can be difficult to be a parent or a child in a media-saturated world, particularly in deciding when children should begin to watch media and which media they should watch. But there are relatively simple strategies parents and supportive adults can use to leverage media to support their child’s healthy development and future.
Parents and other adults can help children learn from media by watching alongside them and answering their questions. They can also read reviews of media to determine its quality and age appropriateness. Doing so can help children consume media in a healthy way.
We live in a media-saturated world, and restricting young children’s media use is difficult for most families. With just a little effort, parents can model healthy ways to use media for their children and select research-informed media that promotes healthy development and well-being among the next generation.
Associate Professor of Communication, University of California, Davis
Ph.D. Candidate in Communication, University of California, Davis
Ph.D. Candidate in Communication, University of California, Davis
Ph.D. Candidate in Communication, University of California, Davis
This article originally appearded on The Conversation on February 23, 2024.
Technology in Tandem: Designing for Joint Media Engagement
Technology in Tandem: Designing for Joint Media Engagement
“Daddy, what’s that?”
“Oh, that’s a walker – it helps people walk when they are a little unsteady. You remember when Grandma was in the hospital after her surgery? She used a walker to help her get around until her leg was feeling better. It looks like the beaver in the show is using a walker while he gets better too!”
There’s a common saying that kids are like sponges, soaking up everything around them. And it’s not wrong – kids can pick up a lot. But study after study shows that when it comes to media, like TV, apps, and ebooks, children can absorb the most when an adult uses the media with them. For example, one study conducted at the University of Delaware in the Child’s Play Learning and Development Lab, found that 4- and 5-year-olds understood an e-book’s story better after they read it with a parent than after “reading” it alone using the audio narration. Interactions like the one above probably explain why. Audio narration can read the story to the child, but only an adult can stop to define an advanced word, describe a picture, or relate the story to their child’s life.
But how much do children and parents use media together?
Despite everything we know about how “joint media engagement” can help children learn, the data show that most of children’s media use happens alone. Only about a third of parents say that they watch TV with their children all or most of the time and only one in five parents say that they use tablets with their child that often. Similarly, only a third of parents report watching online videos with their child most of the time, and less than one in five report playing video games with their child that often. Perhaps not surprisingly, these statistics differ by age: Joint media engagement is highest with younger children and drops off drastically as children get older, especially for tablets and smartphones.
The role of the media itself
Very few media properties encourage adults to use media with children. Although media creators are quite good at making shows and movies that are appealing to children, whatever makes media irresistable for a 4-year-old is not likely to make most adults swoon with delight. Think about parents in the 1990’s complaining about the songs from Barney or those in the 2000’s who couldn’t stand Caillou’s constant whining. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. The beloved PBS show Sesame Street features celebrity appearances and humor that is likely to go way over kids’ heads but is targeted right at the parents who might be sitting on the couch with them. Even if they don’t intend to watch with their children, seeing, for example, Tiffany Haddish or John Legend might entice parents away from preparing lunch or scrolling through their email to check out what their child is watching.
Tablets and smartphones however, may be used even less with children because these devices are not geared towards two people using them together. It feels natural to sit on the couch next to your child to watch a TV show together, but when was the last time you jointly used an iPad? Research has shown that when children use a tablet they place it in their laps or in front of their face, making it more difficult to share. When children use media on a big screen in the living room, parents can walk by and easily see what their child is watching. Likewise, computers are oriented vertically and have a screen large enough to view over the child’s shoulder. Today’s devices are convenient for use on-the-go, but their smaller screens and handheld nature mean that parents may struggle to see what their children are watching. That makes it doubly difficult to engage casually and jointly with your child and the screen.
Rethinking media design for joint engagement
Here are some tips about how media creators can craft content that requires joint media engagement:
When a child opens an app, it could default into a two-player mode, prompting them to go find a parent to collaboratively reach a goal in the game.
Activities in apps could allow for multiple screen touches simultaneously, so that parents and children can both be engaging at the same time.
Create apps that allow children and parents to play together on multiple screens; for example, a child playing on a tablet in the kitchen could send a digital invitation to their parent’s smartphone in the living room.
Consider both children and parents in designing their content.
In the end, we all know that media is often used as an activity for children when parents need to complete other tasks, as a “babysitter.” But media can have many uses, and children gain much from the kinds of casual interactions around media described in the story of grandma’s walker above. Media creators should think creatively about how they can engage multiple generations so that both parents and children can have fun and learn from using media together.
Rebecca Dore
Senior research associate at the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy at The Ohio State University.
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers
Roberta Golinkoff
Professor of Education at the School of Education at the University of Delaware.
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers
Advancing the Science of Digital Games for Children’s Learning and Development
Advancing the Science of Digital Games for Children’s Learning and Development
You walk into a classroom and you notice every fourth grader sitting at their desk holding an iPad and tilting it back and forth as if attempting to balance an invisible ball on it. You hear sounds coming from the children that signify their intense captivation: “Oh I almost got that one.” “Aw, how could I have missed that?” “Yes, got it!” You look over a student’s shoulder and notice a ball, with a fraction written inside it, bouncing on top of a thick line at the bottom of the screen in a forest-like setting. The student is tilting the iPad until the ball falls onto the line. When the ball fails to land on the correct spot, tiny marks appear on the line, which seem to serve as hints. Their teacher walks over to you and says, “Can you believe that this game Motion Math is teaching them fractions?”
Motion Math and other commercially available educational games have entered classrooms across the country, with research demonstrating benefits of digital game play for K-16 students across a variety of academic subjects, including mathematics, science, and social studies. For example, a study showed that fourth graders who played Motion Mathfor 20 minutes a day for just 5 days outperformed a control group on a fractions test and expressed more favorable attitudes and confidence towards learning fractions. Another study found that third graders who played digital math games such as Motion Math, performed similarly on math tests compared to a control group that had completed digital worksheets. However, the former was associated with higher levels of enjoyment and engagement and children were more likely to play with math games when given several other options during free time.
Game-based learning is not only limited to educational games, but can also be extended to commercial simulation games such as SimCity and Minecraft. For example, one controlled study found that adolescents demonstrated an increased understanding of urban and civic issues after several weeks of building residential, commercial, public, and industrial city structures in SimCity. Similarly, Minecraft, has been used in schools across the world to support visualization in a wide range of academic content areas including spatial geometry and ancient history. Although there are relatively few controlled studies examining the benefits of Minecraft, a study of college students found that there are several social benefits to the digital game (and other multiplayer digital games) such as improved collaboration and adaptability skills and resourcefulness. Recent case studies suggest that Minecraft and associated forums may also provide supportive contexts for children with autism to engage with peers and for learners of English as a second language to develop communication skills. Such findings are not unexpected, as game play has long served as a social lubricant and tool for building relationships among people of all ages.
For commercial digital games to contribute effectively to student learning in school settings, professional development may be needed where teachers learn game mechanics and about the participatory culture of game play. Indeed a recent report suggested that K-8 teachers who self-identified as “gamers” were more likely to include digital games for learning in their classes, whereas teachers who did not use games often reported being unsure how to integrate games into the curriculum. Although 74% of teachers reported using digital games in their classroom, only 5% indicated use of commercial video games. For the most part, teachers tended to use traditional drill-and-practice educational games in their classes as opposed to immersive games designed for entertainment.
Despite children’s nearly continuous access to digital games via the Internet and their popularity, there remains a paucity of research on the cognitive effects of digital game play for preadolescent youth. As emphasized in a recent Society for Research in Child Development policy report, more research is needed to identify the specific features of digital games that foster cognitive skills development and motivation. Value-added research, comparing minimally different versions of the same game to determine if specific features enhance learning outcomes, needs to be extended to children, as most studies to date have involved college students. As an example, research on game-based multimedia lessons for plant biology, conducted with both seventh graders and college students, demonstrated advantages for inclusion of an animated pedagogical agent who spoke to the game-player as they engaged in the science activity. In a similar vein, research with toddlers has shown that familiarizing them with the featured character of an instructional math video enhanced concept learning as compared to children who did not have prior exposure to the character in the video. Such findings suggest that forming parasocial relationships with on-screen characters while engaging in game play or other multimedia instruction may foster children’s learning and retention of information.
Overall, digital game play offers a multitude of opportunities for children to learn, but it is necessary for content creators to create appropriate content that is based on empirical research. Building a strong evidence base for optimizing digital games for learning can only be accomplished through dedicated funding. In February 2019, the Children and Media Research Advancement (CAMRA) Act was introduced to Congress with the aim of providing federal funding for scientific investigations of the impact of technology on children’s socio-emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Unfortunately, passage of this bill has stalled. Funding CAMRA is a first step in recognizing at a national level the importance of digital games as a critical context for children’s development and for building partnerships between content creators and researchers aimed at establishing best practices for digital game play in schools and extra-curricular programs.
Patricia J. Brooks & Maya C. Rose
College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center, CUNY
From Beer to Big Bird to Blue’s Clues: Research has Impact
What do selling beer and selling the alphabet have in common? They are forever tied together by the simple genius of Joan Ganz Cooney. Given the challenge to try to make something good out of television that could positively impact young lives, she first made one clear insight- kids loved to watch commercials. “Children all over the country were learning beer commercials so they were learning something, but could it teach something of potential use to children?” asked Cooney. Clearly, the songs, jingles, and production of the commercials kids were seeing were attracting a young audience, but Cooney didn’t stop there. She did what would lay the foundation for perhaps the most important kids show of all time. She did research.
In the summer of 1967 Cooney took a leave of absence from her job at WNDT and, funded by Carnegie Corporation, traveled the U.S. and Canada interviewing experts in child development, education, and television. At the end she had a document to work from: “The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education” and from that sprouted not only the show, “Sesame Street” but also the Children’s Television Workshop, a model for working and creating.
Research had impact.
Her research and work continues to impact children not only in America but worldwide. Doing research and really understanding her audience and their needs also ended up being great for business because the show really worked for kids. They were selling the alphabet and kids were buying in.
Fast forward a few decades to “Blue’s Clues,” another show that revolutionized television for kids. And like Sesame Street, the creators of Blue Clues also spent time before the creation of the show thinking about child development and how it plays into making content for kids. They did research.
Todd Kessler, Angela Santomero, and Traci Paige Johnson—the trio that developed Blue’s Clues—wanted the show to be entertaining as well as educational. Santomero held a master’s degree in child developmental psychology from Columbia University but the novice team also enlisted the help of educators and consultants to craft a format that reflected the latest research in early childhood development.
Integrating this research into every episode, the show emphasized problem solving skills and audience participation in a way no other children’s program has before. While “Sesame Street” used bite sized content to connect with the audience, “Blues’s Clues” used a narrative, and empowered preschoolers to help the host, Steve, figure out clues. Not surprising, Blues Clues was also a runaway success, both with kids and from a business view. .
So the next time you watch one of those catchy beer jingles online or on TV, we hope you think of Joan Ganz Cooney and her desire to “sell the alphabet to preschoolers” or think of the amazing creators of Blues Clues who changed the model for getting preschoolers to interact with the screen. Because for both, research had impact.
Kim Wilson
Media Advisor & Consultant of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers