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novapsycheOkay, so I was on ISCA last night, and saw the post about the Onion article. So I went to the Onion and poked around. It's been awhile since I've done that, and I know every time I do, I'm going to find something there that will make me fall on the floor laughing.
After reading some very hilarious stuff in the Religion archives, I moved onto the archives for Consumer Reports. The very last one in the right column caught my eye, as an American studies grad. Perhaps my background is what made this laugh-out-loud funny to me. It's certainly dead-on target. (I also read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman in the last three months, which really sensitized me to how television, as opposed to other older media, is affecting the quality of public discourse.)
Report: TV Helps Build Valuable Looking Skills
[Be sure to check out the graph of "American Looking Skills, 1920-Present"]
NEW YORK--A report released Monday by NYU's Center For Media Studies has found that television, accused by experts of diminishing children's attention spans and discouraging them from interacting with others, can actually help children as young as six months develop essential looking skills.
"In a study of over 5,000 children nationwide," the report read, "those who watched cartoons for three hours had vastly increased looking capacities when tested the next day, compared to children who were encouraged to play sports and board games with other children for the same three-hour period. Staring and gazing skills were also markedly higher."
[...] "Extensive testing of adults who grew up in homes without television showed that such adults had difficulty staring blankly at things for longer than a few seconds," Center For Media Studies director Dr. Edward DeGaetano said. "They frequently shifted their gaze and focus around the testing environment, often engaging others in the room in conversation and generally making a lot of disruptive noise and movement. Television-enriched adults, however, could sit and look at anything: a spot on the ceiling, a fire-alarm box, a stack of magazines on a table."
"And even when the non-television-enriched adults could manage to look at a magazine," DeGaetano said, "rather than deep-focus on the cover, they would open it and start restlessly looking at words and turning the pages."
The NYU study is seen as a major victory for television advocates.
{snip}
After reading some very hilarious stuff in the Religion archives, I moved onto the archives for Consumer Reports. The very last one in the right column caught my eye, as an American studies grad. Perhaps my background is what made this laugh-out-loud funny to me. It's certainly dead-on target. (I also read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman in the last three months, which really sensitized me to how television, as opposed to other older media, is affecting the quality of public discourse.)
Report: TV Helps Build Valuable Looking Skills
[Be sure to check out the graph of "American Looking Skills, 1920-Present"]
NEW YORK--A report released Monday by NYU's Center For Media Studies has found that television, accused by experts of diminishing children's attention spans and discouraging them from interacting with others, can actually help children as young as six months develop essential looking skills.
"In a study of over 5,000 children nationwide," the report read, "those who watched cartoons for three hours had vastly increased looking capacities when tested the next day, compared to children who were encouraged to play sports and board games with other children for the same three-hour period. Staring and gazing skills were also markedly higher."
[...] "Extensive testing of adults who grew up in homes without television showed that such adults had difficulty staring blankly at things for longer than a few seconds," Center For Media Studies director Dr. Edward DeGaetano said. "They frequently shifted their gaze and focus around the testing environment, often engaging others in the room in conversation and generally making a lot of disruptive noise and movement. Television-enriched adults, however, could sit and look at anything: a spot on the ceiling, a fire-alarm box, a stack of magazines on a table."
"And even when the non-television-enriched adults could manage to look at a magazine," DeGaetano said, "rather than deep-focus on the cover, they would open it and start restlessly looking at words and turning the pages."
The NYU study is seen as a major victory for television advocates.
{snip}