THE MEDIAS INFLUENCE ON PERCEPTION Abstract

Media is recognized to be one of the most influential factors which is faced by the modern population. Exercising great power, media became not only means of entertainment and way to be aware of the world news, but also a tool to promote education and learning in children. As a consequence, for the last decade there appeared multiple of programs and games which aim to develop social and physical skills in children. However, not all the content which is provided by the media is considered to be positive and beneficial for the development of children. Moreover, not only childrens development and perception of the world is influenced by the media, but adults also pay a lot of attention to information revealed; however, recently it was noticed that opinion of other media users is much more influential than of the media itself. Introduction Media has always been a powerful tool to distribute information and provide entertainment to audience. During the last decade it became even more influential as it developed a range of programs which target different audiences, including children from 2 years old. These have an opportunity to watch various videos and programs which shape their perception of the world through obtaining of new knowledge. It has been found out that 2 and 3 years old periods are the best ones to use media as means to enhance learning and motivate children become involved into educational activities. Aim of the research Aim of the current research is to explore influence of media on perception of the world in children, impact made by the media on the process of development of physical and

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social skills in the youngest children and analyze internet and music as powerful tools to shape perception of the world and deliverers of additional information to adults. Method of the research Qualitative research is the method used to reach aim of the research and analyze data obtained from previous researches and studies. Findings Television In the last century television became one of the most powerful tools to deliver information to broad audience. Millions of people watched events of the world significance on the TV and had an opportunity to be aware of the latest world news. However, today television provides even more functions than it used to, and as a consequence, its influence on peoples lives increased significantly (Troseth, 2003). Television shares the first place of popularity with the internet and it blamed to cause numerous problems which are connected with development of children and their social positions. Poor school performance is also considered to be one the most widespread negative influences promoted by watching television. However, such position does not take into account the fact that television does not only represent violence, but it demonstrates right content and development of children who watch television depends upon the programs they watch. Unfortunately, programs which aim to educate children represent only a small part of the content offered by the media. But those educational programs which are regularly shown contribute to development of social and cognitive skills in children. All the programs can be classified by various criteria, including the audience programs made for general adult audience and programs made for children. Each one of them, in its turn, is divided into several more categories.

THE MEDIAS INFLUENCE ON PERCEPTION Programs which are designed for children are: 1) 2) 3) 4) Educational programs which might contain animation or avoid it

Animated cartoons which do not have any informative or educational purpose Programs which are not animated and which do not have any informative aim Programs aimed to be viewed by general audience.

For every child watching some informative program is associated with some skills, such as reading letters, counting, receptive vocabulary, etc. it is natural that children have different skills development levels, but effects of viewing educational programs in childhood are lasting. One of the researches has also found out that viewing educational programs might be especially beneficial for children who come from families with low or moderate incomes. The educational programs for children turn out to be so effective when it is necessary to address some of their skills because they give information by means of techniques which were developed to be appealing to young children and comprehensible as well. Many of the programs of this kind are based on thorough formative research and they target particular audience and particular age groups. It was noted that children who view educational programs are more motivated to become educated, to learn new skills and they have wider interests which later engage them into various social and school activities. One more positive effect created by the programs is that children devote more time to educational activities away from television or internet, as well as to reading. As a consequence, these children are more likely to have successful performance at school and have better achievements of academic activity.

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It was found out that educational programs are able to contribute to the process of education is viewed at ages of 2 and 3. These years are the most important because very young children are not busy with preschool or children care activities. Each of the educational programs viewing can have both short lasting and long lasting effects because they influence perception of children indirectly, but anyway, there can be no doubts that appropriate educational programs (those which meet age requirements) significantly contribute to development of skills in children and to their perception of the world (Wright, Huston, Murphy, Peters, Pinon, Scantlin, Kotler, 2001). Media and Very Young Children Possible negative influence of media was recognized by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends to parents to keep their children away from the television until they reach 2 years old. There are a plenty of videos which are produced for children who are younger than 2 years old and the videos engage more and more children into watching television. Fortunately, producers of the videos take into account recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics and their aim is to provide children with learning, effective presentations of new concepts, etc. However, while some videos bring only positive emotions to children, others encourage negative associations which cease the process of attention development. As for usual TV programs, these are known to influence children disruptively. There is no evidence about influence of violent scenes on the TV on children, but parents witness that the children learn emotional responses from watching the media. As a rule, children do not learn anything useful from watching usual TV programs, but often outcomes of watching them are poor as the media influences, for example, language development in a negative way, as well as promotes wrong perception of many concepts.

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It is also necessary to take into account that television influences people of different age groups in a different ways. Probably, the difference is due to various levels of experience of watching TV. Moreover, it might be difficult for children who have not reached 2 years old to comprehend television, but children of 24-36 months old demonstrate improvement of understanding of television and its educational impact (Anderson, Pempek, 2005). Influence of music Film industry has a long-standing practice of supporting some scenes in movies by music. Even in the times of silent movie, various musical schemas were used by the composers and compliers to develop understanding of the movie by the audience. Today some companies continue this practice, distributing library music of various genres. Music is often used in the movies in order to reach particular aesthetic effect and shape perception and understanding of some movie scenes. However, influence of music is not limited by this function as it also changes the way the viewers percept connection among the characters of the movie, share their emotions, etc. Researches demonstrate that effect from movie scenes where there is no music significantly differs from those which are accompanied by it as music gives the viewers additional information, intentions of the characters, positiveness or negativeness of their thoughts, for example. Thus, music which is present at the films can be considered to be a modulating antecedent of empathic accuracy and concern. It has been noted that various schemes of music influence perception of the viewers in different ways. Thriller and melodrama music for example, contribute to cultural expectations as they sometimes promote suspense or sadness and influence the way some characters are related to. Thus, it becomes possible to suggest that music is used in the movies not only to reflect the atmosphere of some scenes or let the viewers know about the feelings of the

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characters, but music causes the same feelings in the viewers, making them experience the atmosphere of the movie. Portraying emotions, music attributes a certain mind state to the characters, knowledge of the viewers about the character and feeling about him or her. Since music is able to influence empathy of people, it causes a wide range of feelings in them, but not all musician schemes influence the audience in the same mere. Music which leads to feelings of sadness or happiness is considered to be the most influential one and it gives the viewers an opportunity to put themselves into shoes of the characters. Sadness is considered to be the easiest emotion to be caused by music and it significantly contributes to likability of the characters. Majority of viewers enjoy listening to music which brings them sense of happiness or sadness, while thriller music, which makes them feel that they are in danger, and is less desired (Hoeckner, Wyatt, Decety, Nusbaum, 2011; Massaro, Jesse, 2009). Web Journalism Internet is the most powerful, the most interactive one-way medium which has developed various ways to receive feedback from the users, such as ratings, comments, etc. These enabled readers of the news to claim their personal opinion, influence various processes and outcomes, which do not fit the paradigms of traditional theory perfectly well. Web journalism significantly influences perception of people and their attitudes towards many issues. A range of searchers were conducted to study web journalism as means of influence of peoples perception and it was found out that they do not interfere the general opinion from the news posted, but they are more likely to be influenced by the postings of other readers.

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As a consequence, it becomes possible to suggest that reaction of the readers might subvert the process of perception of public sentiment by other people and that web journalism serves as a surrogate to contain general opinion. There can be no doubts that such ways to percept news affects the whole reality of social perception because comments of the readers do not always reflect the current situation, or actual public opinion. Such perception is formed under two conditions: 1) 2) As a rule, the same people participate the mechanism of posting comments; Opinion of the readers is formed by the first comments only as they do not

browse the whole list of opinions. It was also found out that only those people are affected by personal opinion of the commentators, who are not engaged into any effortful cognitive activities, people who are not motivated to act. In spite of the fact that such people have also got their personal opinion considering the news, this opinion is not aligned with attitudes to the commentators (Lee, Jang, 2010). Perceptual learning Over the last decade so called baby media arose significantly and lead to various changes in the perception of growing babies of the environment they live it. The media promote numerous factors, some of which were not positive, in order to change views of parents to option of education and preparing their children for school via media. Academic researches not that today impact of media on perception of children is accumulated and it is becoming more and more popular. However, the level of popularity has not achieved its peak yet as more and more people consider media to be a powerful took to promote development of their children.

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It is important to take into account that many models of children development conceptualize existing connection between brain development and other processes which are involved into physical maturation, and a series of no directional interaction. Thus, it might be wrong to state that media promotes cognitive development, but it would be better to address the mechanisms which when being promoted by the media interact with the processes of physical maturation, environment and cognitive constraints which address both social and physical skills and, as a consequence, influence cognitive development of a child (Wartella, Richert, Robb, 2010). Various educational programs which are provided by the media aim to educate children though perceptual learning, which involves changes of long-lasting type. These, in their turn, improve childrens ability to react adequately to the changes which occur in their environment. Education children via media, developers of the programs target four mechanisms. These are imprinting, attention weighting, differentiation, and unitization. Attention weighting makes perception to become adapted to environmental tasks by means of increasing of attention which is paid to the most important features, issues, conditions, etc. Imprinting develops perception for stimuli or its parts, and differentiation makes these stimuli separated psychologically. Unitization requires performance detection of several pats by means of detecting a single unit which represents a complex configuration. These mechanisms are complex and they are researched by psychophysics, novice differences, expert differences, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and crosscultural studies disciplines (Goldsone, 1998).

THE MEDIAS INFLUENCE ON PERCEPTION Toddlers Learning from Video

As it has already been mentioned above, American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children under the age of 2 years do not watch television. Later it has been recognized that age of 2 and 3 years is the best period for learning through media. Currently more than 80% of toddlers in the United States of America are engaged into watching video programs or television at least two house a day. Some of the researchers state that in spite of the fact that content which appears on the screens is pervasive, toddlers always learn better from live environment, and not form video presentations. Still, the videos are good means to involve the toddlers into learning activities which involve simple repeating or performance of simple actions. It is stated that such programs can teach the toddlers perceive conceptual information from videos and thus improve their learning. Despite of the fact that learning from videos is considered to be easy by the parents, for a toddler it is a difficult task. One of the reasons explaining why the difficulties occur is that television or video games show everything in two-dimensions format and in the real world eye sees all the objects as three-dimensional. And the second reason which causes difficulties in toddles when learning from videos is that they have to process numerous presentation aspects at the same time narration, characters images, etc. and each of the processes may be taxing for them (Lauricella, Gola, Calvert, 2011 ). Despite of the fact that toddlers experience some difficulties when dealing with educational videos and programs, these are considered to be the most effective ones as combination of images and speech give them an opportunity to understand many concepts better. Learning with texts and pictures children get a lot of advantages over presentation of the visual text. The advantages are brought by the modality effect which is an integral part of

THE MEDIAS INFLUENCE ON PERCEPTION 10 the perceptual system and of the working memory (Rummer, Schweppe, Furstenberg, Scheiter, Zindler, 2011). Conclusion Being one of the most powerful tools of influence on people, media widens its significance in our lives and for the last decade it enhanced its function of contributing to learning of children of the youngest age by means of videos and programs. Providing children with an opportunity to learn through simple repeating of movements and phrases, media develops their social and physical skills, which, in their turn, cannot but influence the way children percept the surrounding world. Adult people are also influenced by the media in a range of various ways, such as news, comments, music, etc. These are proved to deliver additional information which not only shapes perception of the world, but sometimes (in the case of music, for example) gives people additional information which is not revealed through words and even makes then experience particular feelings.

THE MEDIAS INFLUENCE ON PERCEPTION 11 References Anderson, R., Pempek, T. (2005). Television and Very Young Children. American Behavioral Scientist, 48(5), 505-522 Goldstone, R. (1998).Perceptual Learning. Annu. Rev. Pscyhol, 49, 585-612 Hoeckner, B., Wyatt, E., Decety, J., Nusbaum, H. (2011). Film Music Influences How Viewers Relate to Movie Characters. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5(2), 146-153 Lauricella, A., Gola, A., Calvert, S. (2011). Toddlers learning form socially meaningful video characters. Media Psychology, 14, 216-232 Lee, E., Jang, Y. (2010). What do others reactions to news on internet portal sites tell us? Effects of presentation format and readers need for cognition. Communication Research, 37(6), 825-846 Massaro, D., Jesse, A. (2009). Read my lips: speech distortions in musical lyrics can be overcome (slightly) by facial information. Speech Communication, 51, 604-621 Rummer, R., Schweppe, J., Furstenberg, A., Scheiter, K., Zindler, A. (2011). Journal of Experiemental Psychology, 17(2), 159-173 Troseth, G. (2003). Getting a clear picture: young childrens understanding of a televised image. Developmental Science, 6(3), 247-253 Wartella, E., Richert, R., Robb, M. (2010). Babies, Television, and videos: How did we get here? Developmental Review, 30, 116-127 Wright, J., Huston, A., Murphy, K., Peters, M., Pinon, M., Scantlin, R., Kotler, J. (2001). The Relations of Early Television Viewing to School Readiness and Vocabulary of Children from Low-Income Families: the Early Window Project. Child Development, 72 (5), 1347-1366