ent of understanding of television advertising is offered in section III. The development of an understanding of the differences between programs and television commercials appears to proceed from perceptual discrimination (as evidenced as early as age four in attentional patterns) through recognition and articulation of perceptual differences between programs and commercials among kindergarten children. Higher level understanding of the functional differences between programs and commercials occurs between kindergarten and third grade. It is during the elementary grades that children develop increasingly better understanding of the purpose of advertising. By about third grade, children have been shown to articulate that advertisers want to sell them products. However, it is difficult to provide evidence that children at this age level take advertisers' motivations into account when assessing any particular advertisement's claims. This may not occur until later than third grade. We have evidence that memory for advertising information, including brand name and attribute claims about products, also appears to increase between kindergarten and third grade. Third graders show more complete, multidimensional, and coherent memory for television advertisements than do younger children. The major implication of this review for the current policy deliberations concerns the issue of age-specific programming. Is there a need for age-specific programming? On the basis of this review of children's understanding of television, I think that there is a need for age-specific programming. Since children's abilities to interpret and understand television content changes, particularly between preschool and the elementary grades, programming which takes into consideration children's abilities to interpret the messages is needed. Major demarcation points would appear to be between preschool and elementary school-aged children, and, second, between younger a...
