Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age [Paperback]

Dorothy G. Singer (Author), Jerome L. Singer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0674024184 | ISBN-13: 978-0674024182 | Edition: 1

Television, video games, and computers are easily accessible to twenty-first-century children, but what impact do they have on creativity and imagination? In this book, two wise and long-admired observers of children's make-believe look at the cognitive and moral potential--and concern--created by electronic media.

As Dorothy and Jerome Singer show, violent images in games and TV are as toxic as many observers have feared by stimulating destructive ideas and troubling aggression. But should all electronic media be banned from children's lives? Calmly and authoritatively, the Singers argue that in fact some screen time can enrich children's creativity and play, and can even promote school readiness. With guidance from parents and teachers, empathy, creativity, and imagination can expand and intensify in the electronic age.

(20050701)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age is a fascinating description of the way that TV, video games, and computers shape both our real life actions and our imaginative worlds. The Singers combine impressive scholarship with deep insight about the dangers and potential benefits of the increasing role of electronic media in the lives of children and adults--and in the end, offer an optimistic view of our wired future.
--Marjorie Taylor, Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon (20070701)

Brings to light some potentially important issues for how various forms of media may facilitate or hinder the likelihood of young children engaging in symbolic and imaginative play...The book should be required reading for persons with an interest in the question of how the shifts in childhood leisure time activities may be affecting culture as a whole.
--Robert T. Hitlan and M. Catherine DeSoto (PsycCritiques )

Concise and readable, this book offers a compelling examination of the ways in which video games, television, and the Internet (both e-mail and the Web) help to shape the lives of contemporary children, adolescents, and adults. Singer and Singer focus on the younger set, and they begin with a discussion of the mind's capacity for growth and self-knowledge. They move through an authoritative discussion of the impact of television on individual consciousness to arrive at a reasoned but impassioned indictment (no other word seems possible) of violent "point and kill" video games, which reduce all social transactions to the level of primal violence. In the chapter titled 'Adrift in Cyberspace,' the authors discuss the implications of children set free in that vast territory. The volume concludes with an argument for the "role of play in early learning," in which corporate sponsors do not commodify children's imaginations. Lucid, reasoned, elegantly written, and meticulously documented, this is a volume of considerable importance and value.
--W. W. Dixon (Choice )

Senior Research Scientist Dorothy G. Singer and Professor Emeritus Jerome L. Singer provide the reader with a compelling examination of how television and video games both foster and impede a child's imagination and creativity...As electronic media becomes more prevalent in the lives of children, Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age is essential reading for all concerned educators and parents.
--Javier Gonzalez (Childhood Education )

In the prevailing climate of judicial criticism of the growing medication of children for Attention Deficit Disorder, a book about the effect of the ever-increasing electronic bombardment of today’s youth is timely...The studies presented in this book are likely to be of interest to family lawyers dealing with parenting cases involving heavy usage of electronic babysitting and criminal lawyers interested in probing the causation of mitigating psychological disorders. If the electronic screen is the square, here is the argument that we should all think outside it.
--Yasmine Swifte (Law Society Journal )

Review

Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age is a fascinating description of the way that TV, video games, and computers shape both our real life actions and our imaginative worlds. The Singers combine impressive scholarship with deep insight about the dangers and potential benefits of the increasing role of electronic media in the lives of children and adults--and in the end, offer an optimistic view of our wired future. (Marjorie Taylor, Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon 20070701) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1 edition (March 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674024184
• ISBN-13: 978-0674024182
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #187,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Impact of Electronic Media on Children., January 5, 2006

By 

Betty Burks "Betty Burks" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age (Hardcover)

Contrary to what we've been led to believe, t.v. exposure could have a good impact on young people as a learning tool instead of a substitute babysitter. This husband-wife team has been studying media influence on children for many years. In his early research, he was looking at television as an impetus for cognitive development and credited it for helping younger children to read. "Other media -- radio, films, and books -- may influence a person's imaginative potential, but none of these are as pervasive in a child's life as television. Children who are very young do not spend as much time with books as they do with TV or electronic games, and certainly they do not listen to radio or attend movies as frequently as they watch television."

With the growth of internet use among children, the electronic media must be taken seriously as an influence upon the consciousness of youngsters. "Currently, there is a substantial amount of research adressing the issue of aggression and violence and the electronic media." A most recent study "adds further evidence linking overt aggressive behavior to a combination of watching violent television and playing violent video games.

Historically, girls have been "socialized into reading and school readiness skills." Before the emergence of electronic media, girls played dress-up games with paper cut-out dolls for many decades. Boys were encouraged "to physical play and to extensive enthusiasm and practice of motor skills. " Boys focus on sports and athletic heroes. Generally, both sexes stayed close to real life, with some refelction of MTV influences. In keeping with findings from studies of sex differences in play, "girls used more verbal expression and boys were more playful and engaged in more action."

"As the extensive research on social learning has shown, we form our identities by combining early awareness of our own early temperamental characteristics (impulsivity vs. reflectivity, fearfulnss vs. assurance, irritability vs. amiability) with modeling ourselves on features of people we admire." The late renowned astronomer, Carl Sagan, (with that beautiful deep resonant voice) has also described in interviews "how his childhood of reading of Edgar Rice Burrough's series and novels about John Carter on the planet Mars led him to a career in science and to his lifelong exploration of outer space and the possibility of extraterrestrial life."

The challenge and responsibility falls on parents and educators to guide children into cyberspace in much the same way as their "encouragement, reading, and storytelling is critical for aiding children to develop imagination and literacy. With guidance from parents and teachers, empathy, creativity and imagination can expand and intensify in the electronic age."

Both authors are co-directors at the Yale TV Research Center and have edited a HANDBOOK OF CHILDREN AND THE MEDIA. Dorothy Singer is Senior Scientist and, together, they have written MAKE-BELIEVE: GAMES AND ACTIVITIES FOR IMAGINATIVE PLAY in 2000 and HOUSE OF MAKE BELIEVE. Jerome Singer is Professor Emeritus in the Psychology Department at Yale University and relates his life as a researcher in IMAGERY IN PSYCHOTHERAPY, out in 2005.