電視影響兒童認知發展之研究

台灣地區自民國五十一年二月教育電視實驗廣播電台開播以來，電視在我國已有十八年的歷史，時間雖不算很長，但是電視毫無疑問已成為最重要的大眾傳播媒體。據非正式估計，國內電視機的總數已增加到三百四十萬架，而報紙發行總份數尚未超過兩百五十萬份。電視的觀眾，男女老幼咸宜，對於不同教育程度與各種社會階層的民眾都同樣具有吸引力。電視節目與廣告的影響，滲透於每一家庭中，於社會態度的形成與兒童教育的轉變，產生空前的影響。今日我們已進入電視時代，電視與每一家庭的日常生活結成不可分解的關係，電視早已成為現代生活的必需品，不僅是休閒生活的一部份，且為獲得新聞消息與生活知識的主要來源。電視的功過難斷，然而無論贊許或排拒電視，誰都無法否認，電視對今後大眾生活的影響只有日益增加，難於抗拒。因此，學者對於這一傳播利器的研究，日漸重視，有關研究文獻不可勝數，國內學術界對電影影響的分析上不多見，本文旨在根據實證研究的結果，提供一些基本資料，作為研討改進兒童電視節目的參考。

The study is to investigate the impact of television on children’s cognitive development. Three hundred fourth and fifth grade children from four different parts of Taiwan were used as subjects. They were divided and matched into three groups according to the length of exposure to television， i.e.， no-television (never owned a TV)， short-term exposure (one to three years of television watching)， and long-term exposure (four or more years of television watching).
Three tests were designed to measure the cognitive abilities: the general information test， the story-telling test and language test. The general information test includes fifty multiple-choice items which cover a variety of knowledge mainly shown on TV programs. The story telling test demands the subject to tell a story according to his understanding from a series of six pictures. The stories were taped for the analysis of their sentence structure， vocabulary components and syntactic development. The language test includes subtests of reading comprehension， listening comprehension， selection of proper words， description and explanation. Besides， a questionnaire is used to investigate TV watching habits of the subjects. The main purpose of the study is to find out the relation of television exposure and cognitive growth.
It is found that the group of long-term exposure is significantly superior to the no-television group in all of the three tests， while it shows no significant difference from the group of short-term exposure in language ability tests as well as story-telling tests. It appears that television exposure affects the language development as well as the enrichment of general information of its viewers. Nevertheless， there is slight long-term benefit in language development and no significant effect in general information. Finally， there appears to be no short-term effect of television access or exposure on language development.