Television “Violence” and Children with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

The role of television viewing in the etiology and exacerbation of aggressive behavior has been a topic of controversy for many years, and popular sentiment supports a causal link between viewing "violent" content and behaving aggressively. To better understand television's effect on children who meet public school criteria for emotional disturbance (ED), the authors conducted a 10-year program of research into their television viewing habits, comprehension of and reactivity to aggressive-and nonaggressivecontent material, and responsiveness to a viewing skills curriculum. Research findings showed that children with ED viewed relatively large amounts of violent material, preferred aggressive characters, and were more likely to believe fictional content to be true. However, they were no more likely to behave aggressively in naturalistic social situations following the viewing of aggression-laden material than nonaggressive content. A curriculum designed to enhance viewing skills did increase knowledge but did not appear

Video Game Use in Boys With Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, or Typical Development

“…This idea has been discussed in other studies of families of children with ASD 4 and disruptive behavior disorders. 45 …”

Communicating the Complexities and Uncertainties of Behavioral Science

“…The problems for audiences with contextfree stories are illuminated by a study that found that nonaggressive media contentmore than aggressive content-worsened the symptoms of emotionally disturbed children (Gadow & Sprafkin, 1993). If the news media failed to put this study into a larger scientific context, a parent of an emotionally disturbed child might prematurely conclude that aggressive-laden television would actually be better for his or her children than television with nonaggressive content.…”

Media violence exposure in aggressive and control adolescents: differences in self- and parent-reported exposure to violence on television and in video games

“…Of greatest concern are children and adolescents with sufficiently high levels of aggression to qualify for psychiatric diagnosis; this diagnosis would suggest that their rule-breaking and aggression are present at levels that are debilitating to themselves and possibly dangerous to society. Relatively few studies of media violence exposure include these types of samples [Gadow and Sprafkin, 1993;Grimes et al, 1997].…”

“…Similarly, it could be argued that the relationship between media violence exposure and aggression simply reflects a separate association of each with lower IQ. Hence, studies of media violence exposure in samples that include highly aggressive individuals must account for gender and IQ in order to avoid a confounding relationship with aggression [e.g., Gadow and Sprafkin, 1993].…”

“…Selfreport methods are frequently used for measurement of both media violence exposure and aggressive behavior, raising the possibility of method bias in results [e.g., Singer et al, 1998]. Very few studies use interview methods to obtain a more controlled and detailed index of media violence exposure, and still fewer ask for corroborating information from caretakers [see Gadow and Sprafkin (1993) for an example of this type of study]. Such a multimethodmultitrait approach to assessment, which incorporates observer-report with self-report, is recommended by many authors in order to provide more valid data about measures of behavior [Holmbeck et al, 2002].…”