The Influence of Television on Measured Cognitive Abilities

TLDR

In rural Alaska, data were collected in 1979 and 1982 to assess the effects of commercial entertainment television, which began in 1977, with half the villages having TV for two years by 1979 and all villages by 1982, enabling a longitudinal and cross‑sectional study, and the social learning concept of reciprocal determinism explains how television interacts with personal and environmental variables to influence test scores. The study aimed to assess the effects of commercial entertainment television on children in rural Alaska. The study examined two cultural groups (Inupiat Eskimo and Tlingit/Haida) across four villages, with half receiving TV by 1979 and all by 1982, using age, sex, culture area, and TV exposure as predictors of four cognitive test scores, and analyzed the data with a three‑stage procedure treating independent variables as sets. The study found no major effect of television alone on cognitive abilities, and interactions indicated that television did not have a uniform effect on children during the study period.

Abstract

In 1979 and again in 1982 data were collected in rural Alaska to assess certain effects of commercial entertainment television, which began in 1977 in selected rural sites. The findings reported here include two major culture groups: the northern Inupiat Eskimo (four villages) and the southwestern Tlingit and Haida (two villages). In 1979, half of the villages had received television for two years; by 1982 all villages had reception capabilities, allowing for a longitudinal as well as cross-sectional study of the differential effects of television on children. Age, sex, culture area, and amount of television watched were major predictor variables while scores on four cognitive tests (CEFT, Kohs Blocks, Raven Matrices, and PPVT) were the criterion variables. Data analysis was a three-stage procedure in which the independent variables were treated as sets. There was no evidence that television by itself had a major effect on cognitive abilities. Numerous interactions show that television in Alaska did not, during the period of the study, have a uniform effect on the children in the study. The social learning concept of reciprocal determinism can be used to explain the complex ways in which television interacts with person variables and other environmental variables to influence test scores.