Children's cognitive processing of educational television messages

This study used the Limited Capacity Model of Information Processing to provide more understanding about how children process information in a television program by looking at the effects of information density and structural complexity on attention and memory in children. Video clips from an episode of the show Little Bill selected according to levels of information density and structural complexity. Four video clips were selected for each of four categories. 58 children were recruited from a local pre-school and a local elementary school. Each child was shown video clips from one of the four categories. Attention, recognition memory, and recall memory were measured. This study found that the interaction between information density and structural complexity in video messages had significant effect on children's storage and retrieval memory processes in general. This study also found differences in information processing between pre-schoolers and 2nd graders.