Influence of Mothers/Grandmothers Coviewing Cartoons With Children on Children's Viewing Experience

Co-Viewing Mass Media to Support Children and Parents' Emotional ABCs: An Evaluation of Ahlan Simsim

That mass media supports children's learning at scale across a variety of educational outcomes is widely acknowledged, effects which are further enhanced when content is co-viewed with a parent or primary caregiver. Ahlan Simsim, a children's educational television show produced in the Middle East, is focused on supporting children's socio-emotional needs. For young children, there is ample evidence in developmental literature that socio-emotional skills are associated with improved school performance, increased pro-social behavior and well-being, and a decline in anxiety and behavioral problems. Using findings from an encouragement design performance evaluation on Season 1 of Ahlan Simsim conducted with families in Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (N = 473), this study provides evidence that families who regularly co-viewed Ahlan Simsim reported improved emotional vocabulary and increased emotion regulation among both children and parents, expanding the understanding of the benefits of co-viewing to also include parents' improved socio-emotional skills. Findings also show that learning extended beyond viewing individual episodes, as parents reported that watching Ahlan Simsim sparked conversations at home about new emotional vocabulary, expressing feelings, and practicing coping techniques.

The Effects of Prosocial Cartoon Examples on Children's Donating Behavior

PURPOSE

In this study, we examined whether prosocial cartoons could inspire children to donate toys to others immediately upon exposure.

PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS

Cartoons were rated as prosocial or control via 80 adults. One hundred and fifty-six children participated in the study (M age = 5.29, SD = 0.79). Children in the experimental group were exposed to cartoons in which the main character had a large number of donating behaviors, while children in the control group watched cartoons without donating behaviors (randomized controlled study). They watched these cartoons for 4 consecutive days. Afterwards, children's donating behaviors toward their peers were assessed in the Toy Donation Task (TDT). An analytic method of 2 (cartoon: prosocial vs control) × 2 (gender: male vs female) × 3 (age: 4 vs 5 vs 6) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to make result analyses.

RESULTS

The empirical results indicated that watching cartoons specifically depicting charitable donations (and not cartoons with other prosocial content) increased donations for charitable causes, whilst watching the control cartoons (cartoons without prosocial content) which did not depict characters acting in an antisocial way did not increase donating behavior. Specifically, 5-year-old female children reported more donating behavior than 6-year-old female children and 4-year-old female children, whilst no significant age effects were found among male children. Here, 4-6-year-old female children and 4-5-year-old male children in the prosocial cartoon condition reported more donating behavior than those in the control cartoon condition.

CONCLUSION

These findings indicated an accumulating positive effect of watching cartoons with donating content on children's donating behavior, especially for 4-6-year-old female children and 4-5-year-old male children.