Naive theories of buying and selling: Implications for teaching critical‐viewing skills

Abstract

Much research shows that children's understanding of advertising intent becomes increasingly sophisticated with age. Little is known, however, about what skills underlie children's comprehension and how these skills develop. In this study, 112 children aged 6 to 9 participated in a 2 × 2 within‐subjects experiment designed to assess their comprehension of two types of transactions (buying and selling) in response to two 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"). Although children demonstrated greater competence with buying and selling when direct instructions were given, 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 exchange of money for goods (and an opportunity for profit), young viewers are unlikely to recognize advertisers’ motives. Implications of these findings for theory and implementation of critical‐viewing instruction are discussed.