Disentangling the relation between television viewing and cognitive processes in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and comparison children.

OBJECTIVES: To develop causal hypotheses regarding the effects of television viewing on cognitive processes in children and to examine the proposition that deleterious effects of television may be stronger among children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. DESIGN: Longitudinal study involving 2 phases occurring 18 months apart. SETTING: University research facilities in Lexington. PARTICIPANTS: Fifty-nine children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and 106 comparison children. The children's mean age was 7.18 years at phase 1 and 8.74 years at phase 2. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Laboratory measures of visual attention to television, cognitive engagement to televised stories, factual recall of televised stories, and causal recall of televised stories. Parental reports of a child's weekly television viewing. RESULTS: Among comparison children, phase 1 television viewing negatively predicted phase 2 visual attention and phase 2 cognitive engagement (after accounting for phase 1 levels of the outcome variables and any relevant demographic variables). Also among comparison children, phase 1 attention negatively predicted phase 2 television viewing, even after accounting for phase 1 levels of television viewing and relevant demographic variables. These patterns were not observed among children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to recent arguments, television viewing was associated with cognitive abilities in comparison children but not children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, a finding that suggests more careful examinations of the relation between television viewing and children's cognitive abilities are in order. Future studies should consider the possibility that any effects of television may be limited to certain developmental periods.

Comprehension of televised stories in boys with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and nonreferred boys.

Two studies compared comprehension of televised stories by 7- to 12-year-old boys with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and nonreferred comparison boys. Boys watched one show with toys present and one with toys absent. Visual attention was continuously recorded, and recall was tested after each show. Across studies, visual attention was high with toys absent but decreased sharply with toys present for boys with ADHD. Groups showed similar levels of cued recall of discrete units of information regardless of differences in attention. When recall tasks and television story structure required knowledge of relations among events, the reduced attention of boys with ADHD interfered with recall. Although visual attention of comparison boys also decreased to some extent with toys present, there was no such decrement in recall. Implications of the difficulties children with ADHD have in integrated story comprehension are discussed.

On-line story representation in boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) face an increased risk of poor achievement in school. Thus, knowledge of the cognitive processing abilities of children with ADHD is critical to understanding and improving their academic performance. Although many studies have focused on the specific nature of the attention deficit experienced by children with ADHD, few have examined higher order cognitive processing such as comprehension of stories. The present study examined the processes of encoding story information, building a story representation, and modifying a story representation in boys with ADHD and nonreferred boys. Boys were asked to narrate a story from a picture book twice. Boys with ADHD showed deficits in representing goals and goal plans in their narrations, as compared to nonreferred boys. Boys with ADHD also committed more errors than nonreferred boys, but did correct certain types of errors on their second telling. Implications are discussed in terms of future research needed to identify the cognitive deficits that account for these narrative deficits.

Online cognitive engagement of boys with ADHD.

The present study was designed to examine the role that attentional problems may play in accounting for difficulties in story comprehension experienced by children with ADHD. A secondary task methodology was used to examine whether or not online variations in cognitive engagement with a televised story were related to the continuity of central or incidental information. Twenty-two 9- to 11 -year-old boys with ADHD and 36 of their nonreferred peers watched a television program and responded to auditory probes presented at preselected points during continuous sequences of central or incidental information. The reaction times to the probes for nonreferred boys showed the expected linear increase in cognitive engagement (i.e., the RTs increased) as central, plot-relevant sequences continued. In contrast, boys with ADHD showed the expected increase in RTs relatively late in the central sequences. The results were discussed in terms of how delays in engaging with central information may contribute to the academic difficulties experienced by boys with ADHD.

Effects of Headings on Text Processing Strategies.

This experiment addressed the question of how headings influence readers' memories for text content. College students read and recalled a 12-topic expository text. Half of the participants were trained to construct a mental outline of the text's topic structure as they read and then use their mental outlines to guide their recall attempts. The remaining participants did not receive such training. Half of the participants read a text containing headings before every subsection; the other half read the same text without headings. The results were that participants who received training and/or read the text with headings remembered text topics and their organization better than participants who received no training and read the text without headings. The results support the hypothesis that signals induce a change in readers' strategies for encoding and recalling text. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.

Effects of Headings on Text Summarization.

A summarization task was used to study whether headings influence readers' representations of the topic structure of a text. College students (Experiments 1-3) and sixth- and eighth-graders (Experiment 3) summarized a multiple topic text that (a) included headings introducing every new subtopic, (b) included headings introducing half of the new subtopics, or (c) included no headings. In all experiments, topics were more likely to be included in a summary if they were signaled than if they were not signaled. This effect was magnified when the text was only half signaled: Signaled topics were more likely to appear in a summary if only half the text topics were signaled than if all of the topics were signaled; however, unsignaled topics were less likely to appear in a summary if half of the text topics were signaled than if none of the text topics were signaled. The findings demonstrate that readers rely heavily on headings in a task that emphasizes attention to a text's topic structure. It is suggested that previously observed signaling effects on text recall are mediated by effects on how readers represent a text's topic structure. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.

Predictors of exposure from an antimarijuana media campaign: outcome research assessing sensation seeking targeting.

Using data from a large-scale antimarijuana media campaign, this investigation examined the demographic and psychographic variables associated with exposure to public service announcements designed to target high sensation-seeking adolescents. The literature on sensation seeking indicates that adolescents high in this trait are at greater risk for substance abuse. Analyses assessed the predictive utility of various risk and protective factors, normative influences, demographic variables, and marijuana-related attitudes, intentions, and behaviors on campaign message exposure. Results confirm that level of sensation seeking was positively associated with greater message exposure. In addition, viewers reporting greater exposure were younger adolescents who indicated that they had poor family relations, promarijuana attitudes, and friends and family who used marijuana. Implications for designing future antimarijuana messages based on these findings are discussed.