Gifted, LD, and gifted/LD children's understanding of temporal sequencing on television

The investigation reported here reinforces the conceptualization of television viewing as a learned activity by highlighting the interrelatedness of children's linguistic, cognitive, and perceptual skills for accurate comprehension of television's most basic narrative device — temporal sequencing. It also explores the likely impact of highly divergent skills and abilities on children's capacity to comprehend television information by sampling children school‐labeled as intellectually gifted, learning disabled, and gifted/LD. Findings reveal that gifted and gifted/LD children demonstrated a higher level of comprehension of the basic realistic mode of presentation than nonlabeled and learning disabled children. Nonlabeled, gifted, and gifted/LD children who where high consumers of television were also better able to comprehend the more sophisticated “time‐leap”; mode of presentation than low and moderate consumers. Regardless of their level of television consumption, learning disabled children could not accurately follow the more sophisticated presentation of temporal sequencing.