Prosocial Television and Young Children: The Effects of Verbal Labeling and Role Playing on Learning and Behavior

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Tue, 23 Jun 2015 06:59:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Television and Young Children: The Effects of Verbal Labeling and Role Playing on Learning and Behavior. CHILD DEVELOP-MENT, 1975, 46, 27-38. The effects of prosocial television alone and in combination with training-verbal labeling and role playing--on learning and helping behavior were assessed. 73 kindergarten children were assigned to 1 of 5 conditions for the 4 viewing and training sessions: (a) neutral television and irrelevant training, (b) prosocial television and irrelevant training, (c) prosocial television and verbal-labeling training, (d) prosocial television and role-playing training, or (e) prosocial television and both verbal-labeling and roleplaying training. 3 measures of learning were employed: a content test to measure knowledge of specific content of programs and generalization of themes to other situations, a puppet measure to assess both spontaneous speech related to program content and helping behavior in a fantasy context, and a third measure designed as a behavioral index of helping another child.The results provide support for the prediction that children learn the prosocial content of television programs and generalize that learning to other situations. Support is also found for the prediction that training enhances verbal learning and affects actual helping behavior. The verbal labeling had the greatest impact on the verbal measures of learning, particularly for girls, and role-playing training was more effective, particularly for boys, in increasing nonverbal helping behavior. The 3 diverse measures of learning, both specific and generalized, were positively related to one another. This was true for verbal as well as behavioral indices of helping.The study described here was designed to test the effects of an educational television program that deals with social and emotional development on the learning and behavior of young children. The second purpose was to test two types of training designed to help children rehearse and learn the content of the programs. In recent years, a body of experimental studies showing imitation of prosocial behaviorhas accumulated. These studies demonstrate fairly clearly that children imitate altruism, helping, delay of gratification, and high standards of performance when they are exposed to models exhibiting these behaviors (Hoffman 1970; Staub 1971a). While these studies are an important first step in demonstrating the potential of modeling for conveying prosocial behavior to children, many questions arise when one attempts to generalize their findings We are very grateful to the kindergarten teach...

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