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... in childrens modes of thinking or problem solving at different stages. Second, stages of thought form an invariant sequence in individual development, so although environmental factors may alter the rate of growth, they do not change the sequence. Third, thinking typical of his stage in numerous situations that may differ widely. Fourth, cognitive stages are hierarchical and integrative: higher stages become increasingly differentiated and at the same time integrate lower stages at a new level of organization; in short, one stage melds into another. (Wackman, Daniel B. 1977) The four stages Piaget came up with were the sensorimotor stage (0 - 2 years old) where the infants behavior is not at all mediated by thought, as we know it, but rather by set behavior patterns. I have included a chart to help explain the period, but will end discussion here on this period as I will focus mainly on the next period, the Pre operational period, (2 - 7 years old).
The final two stages are concrete operational (7 - 11 years old) and Formal Operations (11 - 15). (Phillips, Jr. John L. , 1969) In the pre operational period the child is developing symbolic abilities (such as language and mental imagery), but his behavior is still very closely linked to perception. Piaget characterizes the mental processes of this stage as a mental experiment in which the childs thought is a replication in mental imagery of various stimuli, which often bear no logical relation to each other. (Phillips, Jr. John L. , 1969) In advancing from the sensiomotor stage to the pre operational there is a key difference to notice. A sensiomotor child can seldom utilize any but concrete signals, whereas the Pre operational child can make an internal response or a mediating process that represents an absent object or event. Increasing internalization of representational actions and increasing differentiation of signifier's from significant mark this period. (Phillips, Jr.
John L. , 1969) Intelligence can be defined as the organization of adaptive behavior; this changes in the Pre operational period. (Phillips, Jr. John L. , 1969) A Pre operational child can reflect upon his own behavior as it relates to the goal rather than just on the goal itself. Pre operational has access to a comprehensive representation of reality that can include past, present, and future and can occur in an exceedingly short period of time. The eventual results of this extension in scope and shift of interest from action to explanation is the development of a system of codified symbols that can be manipulated and communicated to the other.
In this period there is accommodation and assimilation. Accommodation involves signifier's, which are events that have been internalized and intimidated. In assimilation the signifier's acquires meaning when it is assimilated to the schemes that represent the signified event. (Phillips, Jr. John L. , 1969) When imitations become internalized Piaget calls them images and these are the first signifier's. Words serve as signifier's and their meanings are similarly determined. (Phillips, Jr. John L. , 1969) An example of this is how a girl sees a car or glass on T.
V. She takes a shell and calls it a cup as she assimilates the glass she saw and begins to drink from the shell. Or she takes a box and drives it around as if it were a car, same idea. There are six basic limitations that separate the child from an adult; concreteness, irreversibility, egocentrism, centering, states vs.
transformations, and transduction reasoning. Instead of the adult pattern of analyzing and synthesizing, the child simply runs through the symbols for events as though he were actually participating in the events themselves. (Phillips, Jr. John L. , 1969) Where a childs thoughts cannot reverse itself back to the point of origin. An example of this is a child sees two clay balls of equal size. When asked if they are the same the child responds yes.
Now, when one of the balls is molded to look like a hot dog in front of the child he is asked the same question and says no they arent the same size. The reason is the child cant see that since nothing has been added or removed that it could be made back into original ball. He cant see that every change in height is compensated by a change in width. This is the inability to take another persons point of view.
This is a childs tendency to center his attention on one detail of an event and his inability to process information from other aspects of the situation. When two glasses are placed in front of a child one tall and one fat with equal amounts of water the child will think that they are not equal. The reason is that the child only looks at the height not the width so they december and answer incorrectly. (Phillips, Jr. John L. , 1969) This is where a child focuses on the successive states of a display rather than on the transformations by which one state is changed into another. An example is where water is passed from one container to another. An adult sees this as one movie, but a child sees this as a series of pictures.
When a child is asked to draw in sequence of events a board dropping, they cant do it. It should look like this: They are unable to integrate a series of states or conditions into a coherent whole namely, a transformation. (Phillips, Jr. John L. , 1969) This is where a child proceeds from particular to particular instead of general to specific or specific to general. An example is A causes B is not different from B causes A. (Phillips, Jr.
John L. , 1969) Daddys shave requires hot water, is not different from hot water requires daddys shave. It is evident that the CTS (Childrens Television Standards) recognize the stages of childrens development. This is apparent, as they require special consideration in areas such as advertising and the presentation of material that may be harmful. (WEB. Program content advertising to children on TV) The next stage of Piaget's theory is called the Concrete Operations Period (7 - 11). The child developing conceptual skills, which enable him to mediate perceptual activity, but only when dealing with concrete objects, marks the change.
Another idea is of consumer socialization which is best understood as a childs developing ability to select, evaluate, and use information relevant to purchasing (information processing). Children ignore some messages and accept others. They search for it select it and interpret their selection are all ideas of this concept. REFER to Chart... (Wackman, Daniel B. 1977) Wohl will argues that the most important aspect of cognitive growth is the childs increasing ability to organize his conceptual skills to mediate incoming stimuli rather than to simply respond to what he perceives.
They use the term perceptual boundless (the tendency to focus on and respond primarily to perceptual aspects of the environment) to refer to this dimension of growth. Younger pre operational children tend to be perceptually bound in their interactions with the environment. However, older kids in the concrete operational stage (7 - 11) dont simply accept what is perceived is reality, but can mentally manipulate perceived elements. For Piaget development is the result of four factors: Maturation of the physical abilities of the child; the childs own experience with objects in the world; social transmission, such as parents talking with the child, and equilibration, the childs self-regulatory processes. (Lyle, Jack, 1961) It is important to note that in the beginning that most kids dont go to the T.
V. to learn, it is incidental. This just means that when a viewer goes to a T. V. for entertainment and stores up facts by accident it is incidental. In a study done this idea was proved when kids where asked, What T.
V. shows do you watch? The response was that out of 111 programs only four where informational that kids watched when asked. (Jack Lyle, 1961) Incidental learning depends on a kids ability to learn, his needs at the moment, and what he pays attention to. An important thing to note is that kids are more willing to learn something when it is new to them as long as it is not too unfamiliar.
Another point is that kids are more likely to learn or act on ideas if they think that they will work. (Jack Lyle, 1961) For example if a fictional character cant get away with it then there is good reason not to try it. A man by the name of Zajonc tried an experiment once to prove this idea. He made a comic book in which a character commits a violent act and gets away with it and one in which the character gets punished. In that experiment the children that read the first comic where the hero gets away with the act approved despite the morals they previously had. (Jack Lyle, 1961) Perception of the intent of Commercials: The last thing we want to talk about is how children perceive commercials. In a study by Ward and Wackman (1973) 5 - 12 year olds were questioned about the purpose of commercials.
Nearly one-half (47 %) of the children verbalized low levels of understanding of the selling of motives of commercials. It was realized by Robertson and Rossiter (1974) that the ability to recognize the persuasive intent of commercials would depend in part upon the childs prior cognitive distinctions: 1) Discrimination between programming and commercials; 2) Recognition of an external source (a sponsor); 3) Perception of an intended audience as the target of the advertisers message; 4) Awareness of the symbolic, as opposed to the realistic, nature of commercials and 5) Recall of personal experiences in which discrepancies had been discovered between products as advertised and products in actuality. (Adler, Richard P- 1980) We include all these ideas in order to show how tough it is for advertisers to get their messages across to kids. The Commercials have to have so many different criteria and the children still have to be there at the right moment, be in the correct mood and understand everything that is being told to them. Maybe this is why commercials are shown over and over and over again. An analysis as to how children develop behaviors that emanate from television advertising is an enormous field to research. The focus of this analysis will be limited to childrens requests to parents, purchases, and how they relate to television advertisements.
Children develop a sense of what they should eat in two ways. First of all, parents instill their eating habits on their children when they make dinner, snacks, etc. Secondly, children are influenced by commercials they see and store this in their memory that comes to light when they go shopping with their parents. To give an example as to how prominent a role children play in buying food at the grocery store, a study by Gas and White (1976) stated that children averaged a purchase-influence attempt every two minutes while shopping with parents (McNeal 1987). The research further indicates that the level of purchase attempts increases when children watch more television. This bit of information is of particular importance for cereal and food manufacturers that market their products on television.
In many cases, television advertising is the primary source of information about products such as cereal and toys for children. It is often noted throughout research on purchase requests to parents by children that the younger the child, the more requests are made. The number of requests tends to decrease as the child gets older. When children were questioned about how often they ask their parents to buy them something after seeing it on television, children considered heavy viewers asked 40 % of the time compared to 16 % of the time for light viewers (Adler p. 141). Further evidence as to how strongly children influence purchase decisions for advertised goods on their parents came about in a study of 1053 six to fourteen year old children and 591 of their mothers.
The two groups were question on 20 product categories including cereal, cookies, drinks, etc. In the end, 75 % of the mothers who purchased these products said they were influenced by their children in brand and product selection (Adler p. 103). Parents with higher levels of education seem to be less influenced by purchase requests by their children. A study by Rossiter (1979) concluded that television advertising has the greatest effects on the youngest children in families with parents of low education and most likely low income (McNeal 1987).
The results of this combination can lead to significant conflict between the parent and child. The buying power of children today is a segment that advertisers are well aware of. Children and teens receive money from jobs, allowances, and birthdays that enables them to purchase items they would have previously relied on their parents to buy. According to Wells (1965), children act as consumers in several ways; by making personal purchases with their own money, by asking their parents at home, by making requests at the store, and by parents buying items they know their children are willing to consume (Adler 139).
It has been said that one-third of major retailers are aware of childrens income and wish to capitalize on this potential market. In a very interesting study by the Kroger foundation, children were allowed to shop at the supermarket as if they were adults. It turns out that the children actively searched out specific items they had seen on television and that most of the children selected cereal they have seen advertised on television (McNeal 1987). Research indicates that childrens wants and desires can be significantly influenced by what they see on television.
In an experiment by Goldberg, Go, and Gibson (1977), two groups of children were subjected to two different sets of television programs. The first program Fat Albert, stressed the importance of good nutrition and eating well. The second group of youngsters watched Yogi Bear cartoons that had several commercials for junk food. Once the programs were viewed, the children were allowed to select three snacks from the following: a banana, peanuts, raisins, Mounds candy bar, jellybeans, and Lollipop Lifesavers. The research showed that the children subjected to the more healthy commercials picked significantly more nutritious items than did the other group (McNeal 1987). Research like this is of particular importance to advertisers who market more health conscious food.
Not only does the research show that children know what they should eat, but when exposed to marketing efforts, a significant portion will pick health conscious food over junk food. Our group chose to collect data that could prove the Model of Children Interacting with Television to be true of children today. We found a study done in 1975 that showed the percentage of children who requested their parents buy toys and cereal for them as a result of being exposed to television advertising. This study summarized the behavior box of the model. The results of the 1975 study are summarized in the table below. Many of the TV commercials are for toys - things like dolls and racing cars.
After you see these toys on TV, how much do you ask your mother to buy them for you? After you see commercials for breakfast cereals on TV, how much do you ask your mother to buy the cereal for you? Our group will attempt to prove that the behavior of children exposed to television advertisements in 1975 would match the behavior of children today. Our group chose to survey children at The Airport Club, Albertsons at Bicentennial Way in Santa Rosa, and Kay Bee Toys at The Santa Rosa Plaza. We asked each child three questions. The first question was, How many hours of TV do you watch each day?
The second question was, Many of the TV commercials you watch are for toys. After seeing these commercials on TV, how much do you ask your mother to buy them for you, A Lot, Sometimes, or Never? The third question was, After you see commercials for breakfast cereals on TV, how much do you ask your mother to buy the cereal for you, A Lot, Sometimes, or Never? We compiled the data concurrent with the way in which the data from the 1975 study was compiled. We grouped the children who watched three or more hours of TV per day as heavy viewers, and grouped children who watched two or fewer hours of TV per day as light viewers. A table of our empirical evidence is shown below.
Advertising-Initiated Requests -- Year 2000! Many of the TV commercials are for toys - things like dolls and racing cars. After you see these toys on TV, how much do you ask your mother to buy them for you? After you see commercials for breakfast cereals on TV, how much do you ask your mother to buy the cereal for you? The data we collected seemed to follow a completely different trend than the data collected in 1975.
In 1975 the trend seemed to be that children would at least sometimes ask their parents to purchase the advertised products on TV with the number of children exhibiting that behavior increasing with the amount of television they watched. Our survey showed that children today often do not ask their parents to purchase products that they see advertised on TV. There is a similar trend in that heavy viewers of television today do tend to ask their parents more, but the collected data presents some evidence to reject our hypothesis. Our sample size was not nearly as large as the study done in 1975. However, a larger sample size may not be enough to change some of our statistics.
There was a huge difference in the behavior of light television viewers today and the behavior of light viewers studied in 1975. Since there was such a discrepancy, a few children who responded that they never asked their parents to purchase the advertised products, were asked why? Common responses were Mommy just buys our cereal for us, or Daddy gets mad when we ask for toys because he says that commercials lie. This leads to an interesting discussion that parents might be having more of an effect on their childrens behavior than in the past.
Or that maybe their parents have a higher level of distrust in television advertising than their parents generation. These are interesting ideas that could also be researched. The final conclusion is that our hypothesis will be rejected. The results may not be statistically significant for publication in a journal, however for our intents and purposes the data collected was sufficient to base a conclusion on. Childrens behavior today upon exposure to television advertisements does not match the behavior of children studied in 1975. The industry of childrens advertising is an extremely complex field of research.
The task for marketers knowing all the laws and regulations in this industry is a chore that is becoming increasingly difficult in modern times. The ability of marketers to make commercials for their products, especially those aimed at children is essential in the survival of consumer goods in our capitalist society. Our research has shown that a majority of adults and organizations feel that advertisers manipulate the law as well as their children in how they market their products, especially in the field of breakfast cereal. Critics have charged that advertisers use celebrities, toys, games, etc. to sell their product without any effort in communicating the nutritional value of their cereal.
The fact remains that the majority of cereal manufactures that use these types of marketing campaigns are for cereal that would not be considered of high nutrition. What has to be remembered is that these huge corporations are here to make money for their shareholders as well as their employees and if they wish to remain a leader in the childrens cereal product category, then they have to use these forms of advertising to compete with other corporations. What is obvious from our research is that the behaviors of children can be influenced by television commercials. Although we had to reject our own hypothesis that the behavior of children exposed to television advertisements in 1975 would match the behavior of children today it is still clear that advertisers can influence purchase decisions and behaviors of children. Our research has unveiled that kids do look for brands in the store while shopping and that is largely due to the fact that the physiological effects of television as well as the creativity of marketers is reaching their target markets and doing a very good job of turning children into consumers. Adler P. , Lesser, Meringoff, Robertson, Rossiter, and Ward.
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Research essay sample on Children And Television Advertising
