The development of cognitive processing of film

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Gerhild Nieding
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: from 2012 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 228728228

Information is increasingly provided through film and television to kindergarten and elementary school children. These include educational programs on television and educational films within the school curricula. So far, however, little research exists on the question of which basic cognitive processes are used in children's comprehension of film. It is particularly unclear whether and to what extent film conveys issues more understandably to kindergarten and elementary school children compared to other presentation formats such as aural or written texts. In the planned project the development of the processing of audiovisual texts (film) will be investigated in kindergarten and elementary school students. In four experiments with 6 -, 8 -, and 10-year-old children and adults, the effect of audio-visual forms of presentation will be compared with audio and with written forms. In order to determine and investigate the cognitive processes that occur during text processing, online measurements will be used. The processes to be considered are those of relevance to comprehension according to the psychological text comprehension research. These are the processes of constructing mental situation models, of producing text coherence, of building analogous representations and of using working memory in text comprehension. The results will test the assumption that filmic presentation forms promote the comprehension of texts from an early age. In the course of development, it is hypothesized that first aural and later written texts will become more important in facilitating comprehension of texts.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants