Question

How human psychology is used by tv show makers?

Answer 1

I am absolutely firmly convinced of the power of television for serving positive developmental ends,” says psychology professor Daniel Anderson. “Well-made television that’s designed to benefit children really does benefit them.”

Ideas like that, Anderson has found, can get you mixed up with a cartoon dog who leaves big blue paw prints all over the TV screen.

An internationally known expert on television and early childhood development, a scholar whose testimony before Congress helped to pass the landmark Children’s Television Act of 1990, Anderson is a longtime adviser to the makers of Sesame Street and other children’s TV fare. He’s currently consulting with Jim Henson Studios on the development of several new programs, and if your household includes any preschoolers, you’re probably familiar with the three shows Anderson helped the Nickelodeon network create for its popular new Nick Jr. lineup — Allegra’s Window, Gullah Gullah Island, and Blue’s Clues. (That last one, of course, is the paw print show in which a human host and his cartoon dog teach basic thinking skills to their preschool audience by giving the kids clues to figure out and mysteries to solve.)


Anderson started out studying how children watch TV; today he’s showing producers how to make the most of their medium and do the best for their preschool audience. His research into children and television began with attempts to investigate some of the conventional wisdom about TV’s reputed harmful effects. The psychologist smiles, “There was and still is a lot of criticism of the sort that ‘educational television is inherently an oxymoron.’ It can’t be educational because kids are passive when they watch TV, it shortens their attention span, it reduces interest in reading, and so on and so forth.”