In order to test the effectiveness of ridicule as an educational and social corrective in children S educational television programs, arbitrary activities involving a novel object were performed by a Muppet model. videotaped, and presented to 4-and 6-year-olds. In each of three conditions of type of motivational message (ridicule, command, suggestion), a highly specrfic action was discouraged, another was encouraged, and a third was neither discouraged nor encouraged. The frequencv with which subjectsplayed with the novel object served as a measure of imitation.Four-year-olds consistently responded most effectively to correction when commands were given. In sharp contrast. 6-year-olds were most responsive to ridicule and least responsive to command.In a Sesame Street segment, Kermit the Frog is severely ridiculed after standing out in the snow for a long time attempting to locate a potential interviewee who purportedly "has been standing out in the snow for a long time."Or, Ernie's raucous laughter and lighthearted insults belittle Bert when he fails to put away a basketball and, instead, takes the ball to bed like a familiar teddy bear. Bill Cosby introduces a"picture page"on Captain Kangaroo by inducing his youthful audience to follow instructions carefully so "other kids won't laugh at you and say you're silly." As these and numerous other readily available examples illustrate, Jennings Bryant (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1974) is a professor of communication and head of the Department of Communication at the University of Evansville. Dan Brown (Ph.D., University o f Massachusetts, 1982) is an assistant professor of communication at 243
285sions on a sliding (Vernier) scale matching the same width as nine divisions on a fixed scale parallel with it. The result is that each division on the Vernier scale is 90 times amplified compared to the actual distance it's measuring. 2 This is quite a significant "zooming-in" effect and can thus allow even typically "rough" tactile methods, such as used by the blind, to detect very tiny distances with high resolution. See the box below for a more detailed explanation.As a starting point, STEP 1 (see photo sequence in Figs. 1-5), we used the plastic Brailled tactile centimeter rule as a fixed scale and clamped it down onto the lab table. We then clamped a scrap piece of door stop molding so that it butted perpendicularly against the left end of the tactile fixed scale to serve as a stop. A carpenter's square was used to make sure they were square.In STEP 2, we placed the item to be measured, such as the aluminum cylinder shown, against the wooden stop at
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