ABSTRACT

The study of children’s playground activity revealed few changes in pat-

terns of behavior following the introduction of broadcast television to St.

Helena. Those results contrasted with findings from earlier similar re-

search in which children from a community that experienced the intro-

duction of television reception for the first time did exhibit increased ver-

bal and physical aggression in their playground behavior after television

transmissions began (Joy, Kimball, & Zabrack, 1986) Even if significant

shifts in playground behavior had been observed across observations

taken before and after television transmissions to the island began, it

would be difficult to attribute such behavioral changes to television with

any precision. The reason for this is quite simply that these group-level ob-

servational data provided no information about the television viewing

habits of the individual children observed. Although it is possible to spec-

ulate that certain patterns of play monitored after the introduction of tele-

vision broadcasts seemed to contain activities, not previously seen, that

could be modelled on those of television characters, without further ex-

planation from the children, we could never be certain that such reason-

ing was correct.