We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS AND THE CINEMA
Help their mothers (girl)
Help their mother (boy)
Help other people (boy)
Be kind to humans and to animals (girl)
Help other people (girl)
Help an old woman (boy)
Behave themselves (girl)
Be kind to people (girl)
Not specified (boy)
Good deeds (girl)
Helping a blind man (girl)
Pull the fire bell in case of fire (boy)
9 children answered 'yes' to both questions whether films may induce children to do good and bad things; 6 maintained that films make children do only bad things, whereas they answered in the negative the question whether or not films make children do good things. With 8 children it is just the other way round.
We refrain from further exploitation of our questionnaire. What we intended to prove, the direct moral influence of pictures, has been proved. The children themselves have had their say. Their answers should be a warning and a challenge.
Emotional responses of children to films have been investigated experimentally by American psychologists.1 They used galvanometric devices to measure emotional responses. It is of importance to stress that the authors' conclusions, though entirely based on a quantitative approach to psychological problems, are in complete conformity with our own findings.
They consider that 'scenes of danger and conflict incite strong emotions among children of all age levels'. And further: 'These motion-inciting emotions must be suppressed to a considerable degree . . . this experience may be considered as questionable for the health of the child.' As a consequence the authors suggest that certain types of pictures ought not to be shown to children, adding significantly, 'providing such restriction is made by understanding critics.'2
The authors agree also with what I have called the decreasing plot-consciousness of film reactions: 'The younger the child the more he appreciated and emotionally responded to the separate
1 The Emotional Responses of Children to the Motion Picture Situation by W. S. Dysinger and C. A. Ruckmick (The Payne Fund Studies, 1933).
1 Ibid. pp. ii4sq.
140