Eğitici televizyon programlarının çocukların bilişsel gelişimi üzerine etkisinde ebeveynlik becerilerinin rolü

This study examined the effectiveness of the child educational program "Will You Play with me?" ("Benimle Oynar mısın?", BOM hereafter) that is designed for enhancing preschoolers' cognitive development and their mothers' parenting practices. The sample consisted of unemployed mothers who had low levels of income, and their children who did not have any formal preschool experience (N=258). Two groups were considered in this study: randomized intervention and control groups. Intervention group was asked to watch the BOM every weekday, and control group was asked to watch an unrelated non-educational entertainment program for 13 weeks. Parenting behaviors and children's cognitive skills were assessed with pre and post screening tests. The results indicated that: (1) the mother's ability to mediate the program content did not have an effect on child's arithmetic and syllabification skills. However, presence of any active mediation enhanced the vocabulary gains from the BOM, if the children had a low level of vocabulary skill at pre-test; (2) the mothers of children who watched the BOM more than once a week significantly increased their frequency of active mediation. The exposure to BOM did not significantly increase the number of cognitively stimulating activities provided to child and did not reduce the mothers' harsh parenting practices; (3) the change in mother's active mediation due to the exposure to BOM resulted in gains for child's vocabulary knowledge, basic arithmetic readiness, and syllabification skills. The major contribution of this study is the demonstration of the enhancement of the effectiveness of a children's educational television program for children's cognitive skills by maternal active mediation of the program content.Keywords: educational television, early childhood intervention, mediation, parenting skills, parent training, school readiness