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In the essay entitled, Television: How Can Influence Children? Professor Mandel discusses and researches the connection between children s intellectual development and the influence of television. According to her essay, recent research suggests that watching certain kinds of programs can help infants acquire language skills, the ability to perform physical tasks and an understanding that what they are watching is like the rest of life around them. According to a study conducted by Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin and Nathan Fox of the University of Maryland, the brain waves of infants change according to what they view on the television. While watching a happy clip, their brain waves reflected a pattern of happy emotions.
Brain activity intensified in the left frontal area of the cortex, which processes complex information. When the infants watched the sad video, their brain waves showed a lessening of activity there, which reflects unhappy emotions. Another study, conducted by Andrew Meltzoff of the University of Washington, babies were able to learn from watching television how to manipulate a toy they had never seen before. In his study, the infants observed a man lifting a dumbbell-shaped toy that could be pulled apart. For 20 of the babies, their parents then put the same toy on the table in front of them.
Of the 20, 13 immediately picked up the toy and pulled it apart as they had seen demonstrated on television. The next day, another group of 20 were tested from watching the clip the day before. 8 of them showed they still knew what to do by pulling the toy apart. This proved to many that babies have the ability to absorb information on the first viewing and then apply the information when the opportunity arises. In the text entitled Psychology, Chapter 8 discusses the effects television may have on children. They again reiterate much of the research that Professor Mandel included in her essay but also take it one step further, applying their theories to adolescents and adults. The text discusses the effect that television has on people as opposed to reading.
Social commentators believe that the replacement of reading by television watching has contributed to the growing inability of people to think dialectically, or comparing and weighing opposing facts or ideas in order to determine the best solution or to resolve the differences. A good example of this is the news that is portrayed through television. Television news often gives us sound bites instead of fully developed arguments, encouraging us to form quick, impulsive opinions instead of carefully considered ones. Hence, the medium in which we receive our information may affect our ability to evaluate the message The text continues the discussion by indicating that many researchers now feel that may discourage the development of imagination and novel ideas. In one experiment that was conducted, children remembered more of a story when they saw it on TV than when they heard it on the radio, because visual images are more memorable.
But the same children s thinking became more imaginative when they heard the story on the radio, because they had to imagine what the characters looked like and what they were doing. The researchers concluded that children who are raised on a mental diet limited to television, may have more information, but be less imaginative, less verbally precise, and less mentally active than earlier generations that grew up listening to the radio. The study of the positive and negative effects television can have on a child, or even an adult is very important and to say the least, very interesting. However, I believe that it may be a never ending debate. Until the findings become very evident and clear to the parents, guardians and physicians of today, everyone will have their own opinions and views on whether the watching of television can have any negative effects over a child.
Television is one of the more popular mediums today, and unfortunately, I don t believe that children will be forced to turn it off anytime soon.
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Research essay sample on Brain Waves Negative Effects
