nd older elementary school children. Major changes in viewing and understanding television occur around third grade (ages eight to ten). In addition to television programming which represents the child's abilities to interpret and understand the messages, there is also an implication of the need for future attempts to improve children's viewing skills. Throughout this chapter reference has been made to the notion that children are active cognizers of their world, that they are constantly making sense of objects and events around them. This sense-making occurs within the limits of the child's level of cognitive abilities and set of social experiences. The same appears to be the case with children's interaction with television. The mental and experiential skills children bring to television have an impact in shaping the meanings they construe about the messages in programs and commercials. Does this mean that the misunderstanding of the seven-year-old child about a program plotline or the rudimentary knowledge about advertising of a five-year-old cannot be changed until the children grow older? Can children be taught or aided to understand more about television earlier than current descriptions of their understanding indicates? Researchers are currently examining this question. As was pointed out early in the chapter, Piaget's theory and other cognitive developmental research have often been presented as fixed and unchanging descriptions of how children of certain ages think--primarily, the deficits of their way of thinking. However, evidence is mounting that stage guidelines for when children acquire certain cognitive abilities are not fixed, that children can be taught to acquire some cognitive abilities earlier than a given theory's age limit. Similarly, there is some preliminary evidence that learning environments can be developed to help children acquire better understanding of television earlier. For instance, there is evidence that...
