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40. Television And Violent Crime
Children are born ready to imitate adult behavior. That they can imitate an array of adult facial expressions have been demonstrated in newborns as young as a few hours old, before they are even old enough to know that they have facial features. It is a most useful instinct, for the developing child must learn and master a vast repertoire1 of behavior in short order.
But while children have instinctive desire to imitate, they do not possess an instinct for determining whether a behavior ought to be imitated. They will imitate anything, including behavior that most adults regard as destructive and antisocial2. It may give pause for thought, then, to learn that infants as young as fourteen months demonstrably observe and incorporate behavior seen on television.
The average American preschooler watches more than twenty-seven hours of television per week. This might not be bad if these young children understood what they were watching. But they don’t. Up through ages three and four, most children are unable to distinguish fact from fantasy3 on TV, and remain unable to do so despite adult coaching. In the minds of young children, television is a source of entirely factual information regarding how the world works4 . There are no limits to their credulity. 5 To cite one example, an Indiana school board had to issue an advisory to young children that, no, there is no such thing as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles6. Children had been crawling down storm drains looking for them.
Naturally, as children get older, they come to know better, but their earliest and deepest impressions are laid down at an age when they still see television as a factual source of information about the outside world. In that world, it seems, violence is common and the commission7 of violence is generally powerful, exciting, charismatic, and effective. In later life, serious violence is most likely to erupt at moments of severe stress — and it is precisely at such moments that adolescents and adults are most likely to revert to8 their earliest, most visceral sense of the role of violence in society and in personal behavior. Much of this sense will have come from television.
閱讀自測
Ⅰ. Fill in each blank with the proper form of the words given in the brackets :
1. She has an________ ( instinct) sympathy with the poor people.
2. These conclusions are ________ ( demonstrate ) wrong.
3. There is a slight________ ( face ) resemblance between the two men.
4. This man has coaxed millions of pounds from a________ ( credulity) public .
Ⅱ. Are these statements True o r False according to the article :
1. Babies know they have facial features just after they come to the world.
2. Children can imitate everything because imitation is their instinct.
3. Television is a source of entirely factual information regarding how the world works.
4. Television plays an important role in giving rise to social violence .
