Media's Effect On Children By Kristen Harrison And Joanne Cantor

Kristen Harrison and Joanne Cantor designed a study, in 1999, to examine the effects frightening media had on children and if those effects continued into adulthood. Their study had three major goals. The first goal was to classify the types of media stimuli that contributed to the fright reactions. Their second goal was to uncover the different symptoms that the participants had within these reactions. Their final goal was to survey the developmental trend in the stimuli and the different coping strategies the participants used. For Harrison and Cantor to accomplish their first goal they first had to decide how they would categorize the media stimuli’s. They turned to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). They
These questions aimed at analyzing how long the effect of the fright lasted in the participant, how useful the DSM-IV categorization was, the range of symptoms experienced because of the fright, and how the viewing-situation was in predicting the effects of the media stimuli and how long those effects lasted. The four research questions included:
(1) How prevalent and long lasting are media-induced fright reactions in a sample of college undergraduates? (2) What is the range of symptoms reported? (3) How closely do the media stimuli that evoke fright responses correspond with the five fright-provoking stimulus types described in the DSM-IV? (4) Which aspects of the viewing situation and types of stimuli predict enduring effects? (p. 100) They also created two hypotheses that were based on the developmental theory and other research done on the types of stimuli that frighten children the most and what copying strategies they used. Their first hypotheses looked to prove that “Fright reactions to concrete stimuli such as scary animals, disturbing sounds and distorted images, and blood will be most frequently reported by participants who were very young at exposure, and less frequently reported by those older at exposure” (p. 101). Their second theory wanted to show that “Behavioral coping efforts will be most frequently reported by participants who were very young at exposure, whereas
For immediate symptoms, the physiological and psychological reactions were coded in conjunction with the list of panic attack characteristics in the DSM-IV. These included: fear of dying, chocking, sweating, fear of losing control, increased heart rate, numbness, chest pain, trembling, a feeling of unreality, shortness of breath, chills/fever, nausea, dizziness/faintness, clinging, tantrums, freezing in place, and crying. The last four are most common in children who experience Specific Phobic Anxiety. They then coded for enduring effects on the participants daily lives. The different categories included: obsessive thinking or talking about the frightening material, altered normal behavior, avoidance or dread of related situations, avoidance or dread of portrayed situations, and avoidance or dread of similar material. In addition, attitude changes brought on by the exposure to the frightening stimuli was then coded as either negative (the avoiding or disliking of anything that is related to the stimulus) or positive (the liking or pursuing of anything related to the stimulus). Next, they coded the duration of the effects from the frightening experience. The coding scheme had nine possible values ranging from 0 (having no effect) to 8 (the effect