movement which relates parts of objects to the whole object and has compared this to the child's ability to relate parts to wholes. His research question is: Can use of zooms aid children's development of an understanding of how parts are related to wholes? He argues that visually the zoom can supplant children's ability to make the connection between parts and wholes on their own. Furthermore, he then asks: Might not television's symbol system aid in the development of other mental skills in children? He suggests that heavy users of television who are working at making sense of the television visuals may acquire various kinds of mental skills more quickly. He reports, for instance, that with the introduction of "Sesame Street" in Israel, second- and third-grade children who viewed the program acquired mastery of various kinds of mental skills, such as relating parts to wholes, as a result of exposure to the symbol system of the program. Salomon (1979) further reports the results of a cross-cultural study of Israeli and American children's mastery of various kinds of mental skills. In this study fourth- and sixth-grade children were studied. First, he found that Israeli children remembered more of the content of television programs they reported to watch the previous day; that is, Israeli children were more likely to engage in what Salomon calls "literate viewing" than were their American counterparts. Not only did the Israeli children appear to be watching television more "seriously" according to Salomon, but they showed greater mastery of mental skills than did their American counterparts; and in particular the Israeli "literate" viewers showed greater mastery of precisely those mental skills (such as series completion) which correlated with literate viewing, but not of those skills which did not correlate. Salomon argues that the low correlation between viewing and mastery of mental skills among the American sample may be the result...
