NurtureShock by Po Bronson

NurtureShock by Po Bronson

Author:Po Bronson [Bronson, Po]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Developmental, Psychology, Parenting, Children's Studies, General, Child Development, Family & Relationships, Child, Child psychology, Child rearing, Social Science
ISBN: 9780446504126
Publisher: Twelve
Published: 2009-09-02T23:00:00+00:00


A couple years ago, an expert on preschool children’s aggression, Dr. Jamie Ostrov, teamed up with Dr. Douglas Gentile, a leading expert on the effects of media exposure. The two men spent two years monitoring the kids at two Minnesota preschools, cross-referencing the children’s behavior against parent reports of what television shows and DVDs the kids watched. Ranging from 2.5 to 5 years old, these were well-off children, from well-off families.

Ostrov and Gentile fully expected that kids who watched violent shows like Power Rangers and Star Wars would be more physically aggressive during playtime at school. They also expected kids who watched educational television, like Arthur and Clifford the Big Red Dog, would be not just less aggressive, but the kids would be more prosocial—sharing, helpful, and inclusive, etc. These weren’t original hypotheses, but the study’s importance was its long-term methodology: Ostrov and Gentile would be able to track the precise incremental increase in aggression over the course of the preschool years.

Ostrov had previously found that videocameras were too intrusive and couldn’t capture the sound from far away, so his researchers hovered near children with clipboards in hand. The children quickly grew bored with the note taking and ignored the researchers.

The observers had been trained to distinguish between physical aggression, relational aggression, and verbal aggression. Physical aggression included grabbing toys from other children’s hands, pushing, pulling, and hitting of any sort. Relational aggression, at the preschool age, involved saying things like, “You can’t play with us,” or just ignoring a child who wanted to play, and withdrawing friendship or telling lies about another child—all of which attack a relationship at its core. Verbal aggression included calling someone a mean name and saying things like “Shut up!” or “You’re stupid”—it often accompanied physical aggression.

Ostrov cross-referenced what his observers recorded with teacher ratings of the children’s behavior, the parents’ own ratings, and their reports on how much television the children were watching. Over the course of the study, the children watched an average of eleven hours of media per week, according to the parents—a normal mix of television shows and DVDs.

At first glance, the scholars’ hypotheses were confirmed—but something unexpected was also revealed in the data. The more educational media the children watched, the more relationally aggressive they were. They were increasingly bossy, controlling, and manipulative. This wasn’t a small effect. It was stronger than the connection between violent media and physical aggression.

Curious why this could be, Ostrov’s team sat down and watched several programs on PBS, Nickelodeon, and the Disney Channel. Ostrov saw that, in some shows, relational aggression is modeled at a fairly high rate. Ostrov theorized that many educational shows spend most of the half-hour establishing a conflict between characters and only a few minutes resolving that conflict.

“Preschoolers have a difficult time being able to connect information at the end of the show to what happened earlier,” Ostrov wrote in his paper. “It is likely that young children do not attend to the overall ‘lesson’ in the manner an older child or adult can, but instead learn from each of the behaviors shown.



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