ty" (Williams, 161). In order for a child to be influenced significantly by a particular program, they must find the programs credible. The child then develops opinions through different sources(parents, teachers, peers), and then the child will have their own experiences, relating what they saw on television with the similar situation they have encountered in their own lives. It is true that the programs that have the greatest influence are the ones that deal in matters we have no knowledge of. An example of this is the scenario of a child who has no experience with death, but is confronted with it on television. When he or she is told that their Grandmother has died, the child asks, "Who shot her?" (Van Der Voort, 72). This proves that television will fill the gaps in a child's immediate experience, therefore altering the way they think about and understand certain situations, causing them to act a certain way based on what the television program has taught them. Young audiences exposed to mass media portrayals of violence learn how to perform violent acts. Audiences who have learned violent behavior from television are likely to exhibit that learning, (or engage in acts of violence), if they encounter a situation similar to the portrayal situation, and expect to be rewarded for that violent behavior. Lab experiments performed on children and aggression have been done where children are randomly picked and observed alone after watching a violent film, a non-violent film, or no film. The children are then given the same toys as in the film and observed on their behavior. The results of this experiment clearly state that children who watch aggressive behaviors imitate the behaviors and are more aggressive than the children who watched non-violent films or none at all. Another experiment done by Streuer, Applefield and Smith in 1971 consisted of five pairs of preschool children. One child from each pair watched a ten-minute ...
