Background television distracts and disrupts the productivity of young children's play, but little is known about how different types of television programming affect attentional control and task performance in this age group. This was the goal of the current project. 115 preschoolers were given tasks to complete while an adult- or child-directed television program played in the periphery, and no program played in the control condition. The child-directed distractor had stronger attention-getting and -holding properties than the adult-directed distractor, and across conditions, it was the most detrimental to children's on-task attention and task performance. The adult-directed distractor also disrupted on-task attention. Additionally, changes in children's frequency of looking and latency to turn to both distractors over the session revealed a decrease in orienting, but average length of individual looks did not change over time. Results are consistent with prior work that suggests parents limit their children's exposure to background television.

背景电视分散了儿童的注意力并扰乱了儿童游戏的生产力，但对于这一年龄段的不同类型的电视节目如何影响注意力控制和任务表现知之甚少。这是当前项目的目标。给115名学龄前儿童完成任务，而在外围播放成人或儿童导演的电视节目，而在控制状态下没有播放任何节目。面向儿童的干扰物比针对成人的干扰物具有更强的注意力吸引和保持力，并且在各种情况下，这对儿童的工作注意力和工作表现最不利。成年人专用的干扰物也扰乱了工作注意力。此外，儿童的变化 在整个会话过程中转向两个干扰物的视线频率和潜伏期显示定向减少了，但单个视线的平均长度并未随时间变化。结果与先前的研究结果一致，表明父母限制了孩子接触背景电视的机会。