Dissertation Information for Lisa Henricksen NAME: - Lisa Henricksen
- (Alias) Lisa Anne Henriksen
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- Communication
SCHOOL:
- Stanford University (USA) (1994)
ADVISORS: - None COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - None
MPACT Status: Complete - Except Indecipherables
Title: Children's understanding of advertising intent
Abstract: Much research supports the conclusion that children's understanding of advertising intent becomes increasingly sophisticated with age. However, little is known about what skills underlie children's comprehension and how these skills develop. This research reviews selected literature on social cognitive development, communicative competence, and consumer socialization to specify the role of cognitive development and consumer experience in facilitating children's understanding of advertising intent. By measuring relevant cognitive abilities, rather than inferring children's ability level from age, this study attempts to overcome limitations of previous research.
Data were gathered from structured interviews with 112 children in kindergarten through fourth grades (ages 6-9). The interview had two objectives. The first was to assess children's ability to perform buying and selling transactions in response to different instruction sets--a direct form in which the child was the agent ("You buy X from Y"), and an indirect form in which someone else was the agent ("Make Z buy X from Y"). The second objective was to test hypotheses about positive relationships of children's perspective-taking ability, persuasive skill, knowledge of buying and selling, with their comprehension of advertising intent.
Several findings are noteworthy. Although children demonstrated greater competence with buying and selling when direct instructions were considered, selling transactions were more difficult for children to perform than buying transactions regardless of the instructions used. The results suggest that without knowledge that selling implies an opportunity to make money, the task of understanding advertisers' motives is likely to be a difficult one. As expected, greater comprehension of advertising intent was associated with knowledge of buying and selling, and with advanced perspective-taking and persuasive skills. Although previous research attributed age-related improvement in understanding advertising intent to the development of perspective-taking ability, this study showed that acquisition of persuasive skill and knowledge of buying and selling are more important in predicting children's understanding of the purposes of advertising.
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MPACT Scores for Lisa Henricksen A = 1
C = 0
A+C = 1
T = 1
G = 1
W = 1
TD = 1
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:10:33
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