Children’s Comprehension of Television Advertising

Children must acquire two key information-processing skills in order to achieve “mature” comprehension of advertising messages. First, they must be able to discriminate (at a perceptual level) between commercial and noncommercial content. Second, they must be able to attribute persuasive intent to advertising and to apply a degree of skepticism that is consistent with that knowledge to their interpretation of advertising messages. Each of these capabilities develops over time as a function of cognitive growth in conceptual and analytical ability.