Citation

Low J, Durkin K. J. Appl. Dev. Psychol. 1997; 18(2): 179-205.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Television viewing may provide input to children's knowledge of crime and law enforcement, but little is known of how young viewers interpret such material. The study reported here investigates how children and adults represent the content of police programs, their understanding of the various scenes, their temporal organization and the various models of criminal justice. Using the script framework of event representation, it was found that with age, accounts of what happens on police programs became more elaborate and hierarchical. Young children were found primarily to understand action-salient scenes but interpreted more conceptually demanding scenes such as the police investigation and the courtroom quite differently from older viewers. Older children begin to understand more complex scenes, and the temporal organization of the various scenes. Analyses of the models of criminal justice implicit in individuals' scripts indicated developmental changes, from pursuit representations in the younger children, through crime control models for most of the older viewers, to acknowledgment of due process (rights of the accused, trial procedures) among some of the older children and adults.