| Abstract: | In the last decade television has become increasingly important as a medium through which a great variety of material is transmitted to a very large number of people. When it is considered that television can match the action to the word, and can create an almost endless variety of animated, electronic, humanized or fantasized presentations of print and pictorial stimuli, the special role of eye movement research in the medium may be seen. Since 1970 the continuing development of eye movement technology had led to wide‐ranging use of systems designed to examine children's performance of tasks in which there is a major component, dependent on visual scanning; that is, of examining a stimulus, either static or dynamic, and extracting information from it through the use of the eyes. The findings of this research imply that the actual performance of a skill, and the continued learning of it are closely related to production variables in the programme itself. In other words the creator of the particular television presentation is in a position to directly and quite precisely modify the looking behaviour of the viewer by variously adapting specific elements and techniques of production. Furthermore, the correlates of these adaptations appear to be related to cognitive learning and attentional characteristics within the viewer. Such evidence presents a promise, a problem, and a responsibility to the researcher, the educator and the producer |
