ENHANCING MEDIA EFFECTS ON ED AND LD CHILDREN

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There is compelling evidence that emotionally and intellectually handicapped children watch excessive amounts of television and are extremely vulnerable to the negative effects of the medium, especially TV aggression. Research on normal children has shown that it is possible to reduce television's adverse influences by systematically teaching children how to be critical and discriminating TV viewers. While such curricula have been tested on normal children, no such test exists for handicapped children. The primary goal of the proposed project is to assess the effectiveness of an existing but modified school-based critical TV viewing skills curriculum in improving the television-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of emotionally disturbed and learning disabled children. The secondary goal is to determine the correlates of TV violence viewing, aggressive behavior, and responsiveness to the critical viewing skills curriculum for this handicapped population, about which so little is known regarding television usage and effects. Twelve classes of 8-11 year old ED children and 12 classes of same aged LD children will be assigned to one of two conditions (TV curriculum or no curriculum). The TV skills curriculum will teach the children about the dangers of watching TV violence and identifying with violent characters, how to discriminate between real and fantasy on TV, and how to evaluate TV commercials. The effects of the curricula on the children's aggressive behavior, knowledge and attitudes about television, identification with aggressive TV characters, belief in the realism of violent programs, and exposure to TV violence will be measured.