Are cartoons pointless? Patterns of gesture and speech use in young children’s television programs in the U.S.
Screen-based media serves as a prominent source of communicative input for children. However, earlier work focused primarily on content features of media programming, leaving content expression largely unexamined. In this study, we examined the relationship between content features (educational content, character type, character gender) and content expression (characters’ speech and gesture production) in 82 contemporary children’s television programs with highest viewership rating in U.S.A. The programs differed greatly in content expression, including amount, diversity, and complexity of speech and gesture production. The relation between content features and content expression also showed that educational programs utilized less diverse speech and less complex gestures – a pattern similar to parental communicative input to children. Programs with female characters also exhibited lower diversity in speech and lower complexity in gesture, reinforcing the previously reported male bias in children’s television. Overall, our results highlight the need for networks to be more purposeful in their content features and content expression to support better learning for young viewers.
Prior State of Knowledge: Screen-based media is a prominent source of communicative input for children. Previous research has primarily focused on content features of programs. No work has examined content expression in speech or gesture, despite the potential effect of content expression on learning.
Novel Contributions: The content expression of children’s television programs showed considerable variability in speech and gesture use. Educational programs demonstrated less diversity in speech and less complexity in gesture; female characters showed less diversity in speech and less complexity in gesture production.
Practical Implications: Networks would benefit from utilizing gesture and speech more systematically to support learning and to reduce the gender bias currently evident in both content features and content expression of children’s television programs.
