GIFTED, LD, AND GIFTED/LD CHILDREN UNDERSTANDING OF TEMPORAL SEQUENCING ON TELEVISION

The investigation reported here reinforces the conceptualization of television viewing as a learned activity by highlighting the interrelatedness of children's linguistic, cognitive, and perceptual skills for accurate comprehension of television's most basic narrative device - temporal sequencing. It also explores the likely impact of highly divergent skills and abilities on children's capacity to comprehend television information by sampling children school-labeled as intellectually gifted, learning disabled, and gifted/LD. Findings reveal that gifted and gifted/LD children demonstrated a higher level of comprehension of the basic realistic mode of presentation than nonlabeled and learning disabled children. Nonlabeled, gifted, and gifted/LD children who where high consumers of television were also better able to comprehend the more sophisticated ''lime-leap'' mode of presentation than low and moderate consumers. Regardless of their level of television consumption, learning disabled children could not accurately follow the more sophisticated presentation of temporal sequencing.