Television no substitute for a good book
by Geraldine Hinter
Children who are exposed to lots of word-based stories at a young age appear to develop far more creative ideas about the future than children who experience mostly visual stories, a UniSA study shows.
Participants ranging in age from 15 to 80 years took part in the study, which looked at the impact of the stories that they heard, saw or read before the age of about 10 years.
Whether they were experienced through verbal family story telling, being read to or by reading for themselves, word-based stories had a different impact on young children than visual stories. Children who encountered a lot of word-based stories had more creative ideas about the type of career they might have, as well as a much greater fantasy life and more exotic ideas about how their lives might be lived, according to researcher Dr Julia de Roeper from the School of Communication.
"All except one of the people who had been read to as small children spontaneously said that the stories they liked at an early age made them feel happy. When asked what they had learnt from those stories, they talked about imagination, respect, acceptance, relationships and how to behave," Dr de Roeper said.
"The children who had not experienced word-based stories through reading or being read to as young children, but had watched television instead, did not have the same breadth of imagination as the teenagers who encountered word-based stories," Dr de Roeper said. "None of them felt they had learnt anything from their favourite stories, which were mostly television cartoons.
"We don’t need to use our imagination to picture the fantasy character Yoda when watching the film Star Wars, but if we are told a story about a wise old person with pointy ears, we have to use our brain in order to build a mental picture. It seems that the exercise of hearing words and then having to turn those words into pictures helps children to extend and reinforce the neural network in their brains. I am keen to explore this area further with researchers working in the neurological field."