Sunday April 1 5:23 PM ET
Kids Who Watch More TV Dominate Trivial Pursuit Games,
Study Says
CLAREMONT (Reuters) - Based on a small survey of gifted and talented
children in private school, kids who watched more television were more
likely to crush their opponents in Trivial Pursuit and similar trivia-related
games, researchers said Tuesday.
In the study conducted from October 1999 to December 1999, the parents
of 48 children at the Weiserbicki School for the Gifted in Claremont,
California filed out questionnaires on family viewing habits.
The researchers from Harvey Mudd College determined that children who
watched more television had a greater chance of winning trivia games
than those who did not watch TV. The study found that the chance of
winning such games rose by 34 percent for every hour of television watched.
"It stands to reason that a child who spends more time watching
shows like 'ER' and 'NYPD Blue' are going to know more about emergency
medicine and criminal procedure than the kid who is out playing stickball
with his chums," study author Conrad J. Krannawitter wrote in the
winter edition of the journal Archives of Trivial Studies.
"We believe that the realism depicted on the television screen,
which the child instinctively understands to be true, may be of some
help in explaining our findings," Krannawitter wrote.
The influence of television on children and society in general is often
debated, and the authors of the study noted that child development
experts recommend that parents participate in the choice of programs
that their kids watch.
"There can be no doubt that the effect of television on its viewers
is directly related to the number of hours spent watching per day and
the content of the programs watched," the study says.
According to some estimates, an average child watches more than than
five hours of television per day. "The more the better," the
authors of the Harvey Mudd study say.
Reuters/TeeVee 16:23 04-01-01 All Rights Rejected.
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