YOUNG CHILDRENS PERCEPTIONS OF TELEVISION REALITY - DETERMINANTS AND DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES

Five- and 7-year-old children judged factuality and social realism of favorite TV shows and test clips in pairs matched for content. In each pair one was news or documentary format, the other fictional drama. A ll children understood that fictional programs were not factual. Child ren correctly discriminated the purposes and intended audience of news from those of documentaries. Children discriminated factuality by gen re of program, and genre of program by formal production features and by content. Age and vocabulary scores (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test -Revised; PPVT-R) predicted accuracy of factuality judgments, but TV v iewing history over the past 2 years did not. By contrast, judged soci al realism was predicted by viewing history and very little by age and PPVT-R. Older children better understood that fictional characters do not retain their roles in real life and that fictional shows are scri pted and rehearsed.