Children's Executive Function

Television has a widespread influence on everyone, especially children. Children are impacted so much by the things they have seen and watched on TV. They learn many things from TV, but their social skills and other learning abilities slow down. Watching TV numbs the mind of children and keeps them inactive from daily exercise. Furthermore, speech delays can occur in children who watch excessive amounts of television. Television programming such as MTV, Adult Swim, and Family Guy exposes and promotes negative

“Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.” (Peter). There was a time when all children wanted to do was to run, play, explore, and be adventurous. As time evolved, children have found more interest in television. Statistics show that a child spends 900 hours per year in school,and they spend 1,200 hours per year watching television. When asked to choose between watching T.V. and spending time with their families fifty-four percent of four to six year olds voted they would prefer to watch television. Television has changed the mindset of children over the years it has been proven that the more programs they watch, the more harmful it is to their brain development. T.V.

Television can affect learning and school performance if it exceeds the time kids need for their crucial for healthy physical and mental development. Most of children's free time, especially during the early development years, should be spent in activities such as playing, reading, exploring nature, learning about music or participating in sports. Research has shown that children's exposure to television during the preschool years is predictive of academic outcomes during adolescence. The most notable lesson about this

Technology throughout the past 30-40 years has become more advanced and accessible than ever. The television specifically has developed extremely since its beginning. What started off as a single camera caption, has developed into a full fledge worldwide availability. Within the United States, the TV is a normal everyday object common in households, hotels, schools, and even restaurants. There are approximately 118.4 million household in the United States that own a television set ( The Number of TV Households in the United States from season 2000-2001 to season 2016-2017 (in millions)).However, the increased amount of time spent watching TV has had a tremendous impact on people, especially kids. The differences in generations throughout the development of the TV has led to many questions, all revolving around whether or not the televisions has had a good or negative impact pertaining to children. Time spent watching television affects the brain, ability to learn, and skill levels in different areas (source. In the book “Last Child in The Woods,” Richard Louv discusses how children in the 1940’s would watch out the window at the scenery and have conversations, while children now sit and watch a movie on a flip-down video screen without knowledge to the outside world (Louv 16-17).

More than a decade has passed, since the beginning of academic research in regards to the impact of TV series on small children’s development. Evidences collected since that time entail limited educational or cognitive benefits of commercial TV animated series for young children, especially when comparing to the information they might learn from live, social interactions (Vaala, 2014). In spite of this fact, most American toddlers and infants do spend time watching animated educational TV series with the statistics indicating approximately 60-80 minutes of daily viewing for the average child (Rideout, 2013). At the time when international viewing rates are not yet available, estimates that exist now bring forth that children’s TV-viewing time is increasing (Vaala & Hornik, 2014). For these reasons, coupled with the questions laid down in the paper, I watched one episode each of Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, and The Simpsons.

This paper explores the research findings on how screen time can effect children and their personalities and cognitive development. I have found four credible articles on these subjects from online sources and scholarly publications. These articles discuss the results of different studies about children’s exposure to television and online content and how they have negative effects on the developing child’s brain in terms of cognitive development and personality traits.

There are many different things that shape the cognitive development of children. To begin with cognitive development is when a child develops how to process, solve problems, and start making decisions. Once they have learned this they take everything they have learned into their adolescence. An example, of what can shape the cognitive development of a child can be an educational game. Educational games can be very useful in shaping a child’s development because they are having fun while learning at the same time and what kid doesn’t like to play games, the fact that it is even educational makes it even better for them. Not only are they having fun but there are many different games that help in different categories of development in

With the advancement in technology it has become common for infants, toddlers, and young children to be exposed to electronics such as televisions, computers, and videogames for hours at a time. Environmental factors affect children in significant ways. The effects the media and screen time children are revealed to influence their physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development. Television and media can both hinder and encouraging their growth. It is important for guardians, caregivers, teachers, whomever has a child they look after or care for, to make accommodations to construct the best possible environment for children to flourish in. At such a young age, these young humans are like sponges, they absorb much of what surrounds them. Because of this, the importance of trying to make it possible that they are mainly witnessing things helpful to the development of the child and thereby, benefiting them later in life.

Since I was little up to now, television has changed from what I grew up with. For this project I watched three television shows, one in the morning, one late afternoon, and one evening show before eight pm. In the morning I watched Dora and Friends: Into the City. At first I was surprised that Dora grew up and different from what I used to watch Dora. Similar to the Dora the Explorer, Dora and Friends: Into the City is a show about Dora and her friends Anna and Pablo. This show demonstrated more prosocial acts than violets acts. Dora and Friends: Into the City showed prosocial acts such as making a story for a group of little kids, and helping Kate find her book. The only violet acts was stealing and yelling.

The specific objective of this study is to establish the relationship between attention and child television programs by improving on existing research. The study aims to focus on the impact of different types of television on the cognitive attention of children.

In a study by Iman Sharif and James D. Sargent, 4508 students participated to find out whether or not certain television content affected the grades of young children. In many analyses they found that,

This perspective represents the dominant paradigm in TV research. In its crudest form the relationship between children and television is portrayed as a matter of single cause and direct effect, which puts this kind of research firmly in the behaviourist tradition: based on what's sometimes referred to as the 'magic bullet' theory. Approaches have become more sophisticated in recent decades, stressing such complicating factors as the variety of audiences, individual differences and the importance of 'intervening variables'. The early survey work in the 1950s by Wilbur Schramm and his colleagues in the US and by Hilde Himmelweit and her colleagues in Britain are remarkably cautious compared with many later studies.

Television is a big part of today’s society. Everybody watches television, including the children. There is a potential problem with letting children watch television. Ask this question, would someone let their own child watch some of the programming that they watch, too? Some of these programs are intended for the adult generation, not young children. Violence has a major role in television these days. Letting children watch this violence could corrupt their minds and eventually lead to bad behavior. There needs to be a limitation on the types of television programming that parents let their children watch, because violence in television can negatively affect children.

According to George Gerbner, Cultivation theory suggests that exposure to television, over time, subtly "cultivates" viewers ' perceptions of reality (Griffin 2015). Watching television can affect an individual’s perception of the world. Gerbner offers two categories in which one person is affected by television or not. Heavy viewers, also referred to as television types, are people who watch four or more hours of television per day. Light viewers are people who watch television two hours or less per day. Gerbner argues that heavy television viewing creates an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world (Griffin 2015). A mean and scary world according to all the dramatic violence that is portrayed in television. To explain how violence in television affects viewers and their perception of the world, we must play part in experiments. We would have to recognize whether or not viewers are seen as heavy or light viewers which identify if they are affected by dramatic violence of television to reality.

There is no doubt that when it comes to American youth television is one of the biggest influences by far. Many parents would love to say that their child does not watch that much TV but in reality they are spending a lot of time watching television or using media in some way. “The study by the Kaiser Family foundation shows that children ages 2-8 spend an average of 5 ½ hours a day “consuming media” kids 8 and older spend even more time in front of the tube nearly 6 ¾ hours a day” (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005 ). Astonishingly, more time is being spent with media then doing homework, studying or even spending time with family. A child’s retention of what