levision in the homes and recorded their observations. However, in two other studies where trained observers recorded children's attention in controlled viewing rooms, an increase in attention was found at the onset of a commercial after breaking from a program (Wartella and Ettema, 1974; Zuckerman, et al., I977, 1978). This is in contradiction to Ward and Wackman. Wartella and Ettema (1974), observing nursery, kindergarten, and second-grade children, found that the youngest age group, in particular, showed variation in attention to commercials depending on the commercials' perceptual activity--the more visual and auditory changes present in the commercial, the more likely it was to elicit full attention by the nursery schoolers. Second graders' attention was less susceptible to variations in perceptual complexity; these children showed uniformly high attention to the commercials. In contrast to the Wartella and Ettema study, Zuckerman et al. (1977) found second, third, and fourth graders who watched a 15- minute presentation with four commercials embedded in program content to show relatively low mean attention to the commercials. In both studies the pattern of attention to the commercials was comparable: movement toward higher attention at the onset of a commercial with attention falling during the commercials; then again movement toward attention at the onset of a second commercial in the series or at the return to the program. Two studies which have examined children's attention to clustered commercials, Duffy and Rossiter (1975) and Atkin ( 1975a) have found that clustering of commercials in blocks does not decrease young children's attention. For instance, Duffy and Rossiter showed groups of first- and fourth-grade children either a clustered commercial/program format or the traditional dispersed commercial/program format in a classroom viewing situation. Observers estimated the percentage of children in the class at "full attenti...
