A new study finds children trust knowledgeable characters on educational TV shows.
When watching educational programming on television, children are more likely to learn from animated characters if the children believe the characters in the show are knowledgeable, and if they are reminded to think about what they have seen on television for ideas of how to solve a problem, according to a new study called U.S. Preschoolers’ Trust of and Learning from Media Characters.
Past research demonstrated that preschool children learn the intended lessons and concepts from age-appropriate, curriculum-based television programs, so the purpose of this study was to examine how certain perceptions of television characters impact learning.
The group of researchers examined 37 children, ages 2-6. The children watched a short, animated clip of an educational program in which the character creates a lever out of his toys. After watching the clip, the children were invited to create their own lever. The researchers found that the children were more likely to make their own lever if they believed the character was smart and knowledgeable and they were reminded to think about what they had seen in the video for ideas of how to solve the problem.
“We believe these findings tell us that the kinds of characters in children’s programs play a key role in helping children learn how and when to apply the information they learn in educational videos and programs to the world in general,” explained Rebekah Richert, Ph.D., psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, who was on the team of researchers in the study.
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