Citation

Peterson L. Educ. Treat. Child. 1985; 8(3): 199-219.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1985, West Virginia University Press)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Researchers have suggested that consumer education for children will be unable to alter the degree to which advertisements can deceive children. This article argues that this need not be the case. It is possible to educate children to be critical consumers of televised advertisements. Eight elementary school children received training directed toward developing an ability to separate actual product information from deceptive television advertising techniques as part of a demonstration project. Training children to passively recognize information versus deception resulted in slight decreases in the children's preference ratings for advertised cereals and small increases in children's spontaneous recognition of product information and deceptive techniques, but it did not improve children's abilities to make competent consumer comments on the advertisements. Further training which concentrated on children's active labeling and discrimination of deceptive techniques resulted in increases in the number of competent consumer comments as well as large increases in children's accurate reports of actual product information and enumeration of the deceptive techniques used in the advertisement. It appears that active discrimination training can alter children's consumer responses to televised advertisements, and such training can take place with minimal teacher effort and classroom time.

Language: en