Why Rural Chinese Children Lack Explicit Understanding of Virtual Worlds

¶ … Explicit and Implicit Television Cognition of Left-Behind Children in China Liuna Geng, Wenjun Zhou, and Qiaoxin Xu Journal & Year: Social Behavior and Personality, 2013 What is the purpose of this study? The purpose of this study is to research the lives of children who have been left in rural areas while their parents move into cities for employment; and in that research the point of the article is to determine how children perceive what they view on television.

These children tend to be depressed, lonely, and lacking in education -- and no doubt missing their parents -- so the research was to determine how those "left-behind" children perceive television. It is known, according to the authors, that children imitate what they see on television, and sometimes imitating what they see on television can mean they are acting out inappropriate behaviors.

Do they have explicit abilities (with no confusion) to separate real from virtual in terms of what they see on television? What is their implicit (unconscious) understanding of television vs. real life? TWO: What are the independent and dependent variables? The independent variables in this research are the children, their television viewing habits, and isolation from their biological parents. The dependent variables are how they are impacted by television's messages, whether they can distinguish between what they see and hear on television and what they experience in the real world.

THREE: What type of study was conducted and how did they collect their data? This was a psychological cognition study based on the need to understand how television was impacting left behind children in rural China. The data that was sought for this study was acquired through the use of the Television Virtual and Real-Life Questionnaire (a 16-item "self-report" test) and the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT) (employing real live and virtual exemplars) to measure the students' implicit cognition of what they see on television.

FOUR: What were the results? The results showed what the researchers had predicted -- that is, children that are left behind by their biological parents, and who watch a great deal of television, have trouble "…distinguishing between television virtual and real life" (Geng, et al., 2013). The explicit cognition that researchers did not expect to see in their children -- and did not see for the most part -- would have been a "rational, thoughtful, and conscious process" that involved logic and reality.

But rather than rational and thoughtful consciousness, the results showed an "…immature cognitive development" among the children, because their cognitive development was based largely on their environment -- which was the unreal world of television.

FIVE: What can be concluded from this research? What are the practical implications of these findings? The most obvious conclusion that can be reached is that when healthful family activities (away from television and media) -- and children's natural interactions with their parents -- are rare, children are going to watch a lot of television and that is not a good thing. The practical implications are that grandparents and older siblings or guardians should take responsibility for involving children in real-life activities, outdoors when possible.

Another implication is that many of these children might grow up with limited cognitive abilities, and they may imitate.