CINEMA AND CHILDREN PSYCHOLOGY

BY JOSEPHINE

CAFA PUBLICATION CHENNAI

BY JOSEPHINE

COPYRIGHT@CAFA PUBLICATION 2014

Synergiamindsolutions.business.site joseinchrist@gmail.com Ph; + 91 9003081442, 9543171958 CHENNAI

CONTENTS

1. Introduction

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2. Cognitive development and study

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3. Function of mind in cinema

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4. Dream process and cinema

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5. Children’s view point in film evaluation

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6. Parents guide lines

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PREFACE Film psychology is a specific branch of film studies which has been erased from the roads of film journey. Yet it has taken different forms with different film directors and creators who self learn the art of filming and its effect in viewers mind.

In 21st century, where technology is priding the art of film making. It is now the time to refresh the application of film psychology in film making. Hollywood and European film makers having core depth of knowledge in film psychology are able to create successful movies in both aesthetic and commercial. In India, the attempt to bring film psychology more academically will pay way for new film makers to succeed in their art of film making with well defined scientific knowledge.

The aim of this book is to bring out an initial stage of awareness about the impact of films upon young minds and the author has condensed the material so that it would reach the hands at ease.

special thanks to Mr. KINGLI DANIEL MA. Comm (film maker)

CINEMA AND CHILDREN PSYCHOLOGY

Whenever we say to the child that “we are going to cinema today”, the child will be positively expressionistic with active physical participation to it (lazy child gets ready quickly, completes task on time, etc). The child always shows more interest when there is new learning with rewards (instrumental learning).The child takes interest in learning the film due to rewards like ice-cream, popcorn gets during intermission of film and then it degenerates during later half of movie. This film learning is non-reproductive until the age of 7yrs, because first stage of life (0-3yrs)the child can’t make fantasy-reality distinction(JAGOM and GARNER 1981) and impermeable by filmic elements into mind due to lack of knowledge and understanding related to film during 4-6yrs of life.

The learning will be stronger enough after 7yrs of life for imitating the actions or dialogues of the hero or from attractive persons in film. Also this reflects in one’s origin of physical actions or behavior throughout life. The first learning in children about each new topics or information won’t change until the child attains adulthood, because the adulthood age accepts the logical reasoning for changing the learnt one through understanding and judging it(right or wrong) based 5

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on one’s experiences and from social learning’s. The child generalizes the first learning information in all aspects of social life because the film gives them a new and advanced learning in both positive and negative aspects. Also subconscious mind will be more active than conscious mind( due to lack of knowledge or orientation)learns all the elements from the film(mass reading)getting reminded as well as motivated when the child come across in future. Such reflection of actions will be involuntary. In short, child won’t evaluate the film for do’s and don’ts out of theatre after show, just receives all information from the movie and adapts in life without reasoning. Example; the child fights for everything in presence of more option to react, based on self-concept as hero in film fought for his likes and received. The child starts reasoning when they see problems during application or while experiencing it. The similar learning’s can also elicit reasoning.

Example; the kind of love between hero and heroine which is not applicable among siblings (similar blood born).

This may raise a question, why children’s below 7yrs are more interestingly watching cartoons? The child pays its attention closely when they see primary colors (red, blue, and green) especially with high intensities, which attracts them to watch cartoons by giving visual pleasure due to hypoactive visual 6

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sensory functional cells. The learning memory will mould one’s personality after 7yrs of life.

Also there might be a question, why child below 7yrs gives more facial expressive responses while watching cartoon network programs? The child can identify both positive and negative feel generation since birth and gives irrational response related to it. Example; If we make funny faces in front of baby, it laughs and for negative sounds, it cries. This is due to baby’s learning from mother’s expressions as harmless and feels positive (secure) and also responds positively to others expression similar to its mother. Dissimilarity makes

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baby to feel in secured and harmful. So, it responds negatively by crying aloud.

While watching movie, we perform a host of emotional behaviors in responds to it (we cry at the climax of a sad film, we are emotionally aroused by erotica, we make personal judgments about the film and so on). The most important filmrelated behavior children learns from adult is, that, contrary to what the adult says. The child believes the deep importance and highly real value, when they spend more time and high concentration to it, even though, the child gets education about it from parents (the hero’s and heroine’s are just pretending and working for money or its only a game play by performers).In short, the child even after the parental guidance in reality-fantasy distinction, it adapts and believes 8

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the roles and plays in films due to spending more time and attention to it. This is due to persuasion by the child based elements in film (elephants, dogs, camel, birds, books, toys, etc...) The child gets continuous attention to film by using child known location, frame elements, instrumental music play etc… but the child doesn’t know how far known elements in film are closely related to story. Example; the child reminds us about the last visit to Besant nagar beach when it sees the unnamed sea shore in film, children asking for its toy due to reminding elements by film i.e. by seeing toys in a movie. The child doesn’t relate these known elements towards understanding the film story due to lack of knowledge and experience.

Although may rise a question that, why children’s do the adult love based activity under school sector? The child learns from the hero and heroin’s drama act through observation in film and participation by being messenger to senior class pupil in school. This gives only advanced learning satisfaction among children’s in both sex, exception as physical need and satisfaction. These kinds of children’s mental age will be more than physical age which helps in taking roles and responsibilities soon in their achievement path.

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COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT AND STUDY The children’s nature of discrepancies focuses between their current- self and their ideal- self (actual: ideal discrepancies).

The ideal- self is the child’s self-concept of how he/she should be under any influence. The first or new learning becomes the ideal self of the child. Learning for ideology will be optimal and strong enough when the information approach is based on negatively framed in film for positive attitude change in viewers. Example; hero fights (negative approach) with antagonist for the benefit of his likes (positive expectation).

Based on this knowledge the child fights for everything (likes/dislikes) even though there is presence of more options in attaining one’s desire. Such effective negatively framed messages in film attract and motivate the child in theatrical learning by its high intensified color’s (dark color) including primary colors. This intensified color’s makes the child to feel its thick density visually and psychologically perceives it significantly higher in learning which is the nature and involuntary mental process of the child during film watch.

In 1980, Hughes and Grieve done the methodological study among children’s age greater than 7yrs with non-sense question, “Is milk bigger than water?”, many children’s made 10

CINEMA AND CHILDREN PSYCHOLOGY serious attempts to answer such questions as, “milk is bigger because it ‘s got a color”.

In the aspects of animation film watch, the child doesn’t think “why the animated characters are moving in and around inside every frame in movie? Basically, characters can move or not?”The child simply credits animated figures with their degree of autonomy (physical maturation gives sense of being able to do things for self) by Dorr, Graves and Phelps (1980) and also learns the animated performance from the film. In short, due to its sense of physical maturation or ability, they feel that they can perform successfully the animation performance as such portrayed in film (imitation without purpose or understanding).

The film educates about filmic readings (how to read and understand the film messages) to the child (7-9yrs) during 11

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further frequent visits with different movies. The education starts with identifying the main characters (hero, heroine, villain, etc…) by equating similarities between each different movie. The similarity will be a person who occupies more space in a frame, who takes up more activity in a film are identified as main characters in a movie. Once the child starts identifying it, parents are asked for the name of those characters, also be forced to explain about each different actions set by the character. Example; A character who risks life for helping others will be the real hero, due to power and intelligence which is portrayed in movie “VELLAYUTHAM”, actor Vijay risks his life in stopping train which is about to strike dangerous container.

The child (>9yrs) identifies the film characters as analogous to people they know in real life. The awareness develops in tandem with their real-life person’s knowledge. Example; the child fears by seeing teacher role in film due to remembrance of his tandem with the real life teacher who punishes for home works.

Low and Durkin2000, made studies on children’s processing of film narratives and memory for film stories. He says that when narratives are jumbled up in an unpredictable, illogical 12

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fashion (creativity in film making), children below 9yrs tend to make errors based on logical inference. In other words, they fall back on familiar narrative routines. By the age of 9, children’s are just as good at recalling the mixed up narratives like dialogue, non-linear narration, sound effects, etc… In short, the child narrates the story of film in the same style how the film narrates, with attempt of vocal dialogue and sound effects, also imitating the actions of admired film characters.

The benefit of social language development results The child perceives the world via his/her senses from a very early age, the aesthetic experience (morale sense) is fundamental in their development. The combination of words, visual images and movements in film simultaneously creates a complicated inner-grammar based on aesthetic experience during his/her real-life development. This inner grammar strengthens or weakens the before learning (taken before movie watch) after theatrical watch. Example; even though mother teaches about positives in “helping elderly people”, after watching the related scene in film which narrating “the negatives that hero gets due to helping elderly character as portrayed in movie “SIVAKASI” muthappa helping his own elder brother during childhood and gets hurt. By this, child results with decrease in helping attitude.

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FUNCTION OF MIND IN CINEMA

The child with genetically inherited openness of mind puts lots of questionnaires to their parents while watching movie which helps them in distinguishing good and bad learning’s from movie as an active learning process. This open mind gives developmental maturation and execution under Erickson’s developmental task. Example; A child with open mind (6-11yrs) shows academic learning strength (class topper) to the weak students and helps them in studying tough subject for one’s recognition as hero with intellectual power (learning from movie) under developmental stage of Industry Vs Inferiority. The child carries matured industrial way to attain one’s task or goal.

Genetically inherited closed mind will be passive in learning process without reasoning in which child will be learning both good and bad from the movie and executes in immature way 14

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under Erickson’s developmental task. Example; The child (611yrs) fights with the peer group in immature way due to inferiority or neglected feel for one’s recognition as hero with power (learning’s from movie)under developmental stage of Industry Vs Inferiority. In short, the openness of mind doesn’t make fixed generative ideas upon movie learning.

Unlike the adult, the child sleeps inside theatre due to loss of mind-self control whenever the film takes them too different stages of mind (alpha, beta, and theta). During beta stage, the child watches film cautiously for film relation to reality by the age >9yrs. This beta stage will be active during first 45mins 1hr film duration then turns to have gradual decline to sleep in open –minded children while watching adult movies. In closed minded child, the beta stage will be passive during first 20mins-40mins ends up with gradual sleep activity while watching adult movies. The presence and types of learning differs while watching children’s movie based on extent of stimulation for attraction and understanding in it. In Applied aspects, Adult movie has drastic fluctuations in audio intensity based on logical narrative tempo (to create real feel among audience) but children’s movie maintains more or less constant intensity in absence logical narrative tempo.

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While sleeping inside theatre, the child (open/closed minded) develops dreams relevant to the knowledge gained from the movie during active / passive learning film duration. The sounds and lights of film stimulates dreams or insight vision in sleeping children (alpha state of mind) by mental activity of ideal perception, which sets one’s wish and motives. The perceptual complexity (difficulty in identifying to set optimal attention and understanding based perception) in film concept will attract the child more when they come across during later ages and develops it as internal wish for it. In short, while watching perceptual complexity in film concept, soon the child gets distraction but this previous knowledge will attract them to the later advance knowledge related to it. Example; If the children below 11yrs watches Tamil movie “ROBO”, the difficulty in understanding the concept of “Red chip problems in Robots”, will develop positively the wishes for becoming Robotic scientist in future when they gets favorable learning related to it.

Formation of wishes by internal factor (own thought influence, not by environmental force) is due to high intensified attention i.e. selective attention (gives complete needed perception to mind) and preferences by mental activity (based on Myer’s Brigg Type Indicator).

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DREAM PROCESS AND CINEMA Film watching makes the child to experience two set of dream process. Namely, Induced dream and spontaneous dream.

Induced dream is the process of imagination based on wish fulfillment, ends with positive climax which makes the child to be in Catatonic stupor (remaining unchanged position or body posture for longer duration). This takes place during casting, song sequence and known location in film among age group 7-11yrs. The result of Catatonic stupor is due to selective attention by mental process and afferent nervous conduction biologically, with voluntary cessation of conduction to brain which further develops into selfimagination based on settled mood swing by the songs, introcharacter scene and so on. The stimulation for induced dream will be optimally in closed minded children (thinking, thoughts or ideas about one’s self and self related).

Spontaneous dreams- the communication of sub-conscious mind memory to conscious mind (during awake- through instinct, during sleep-dreams), ends with negative climax. This spontaneous dream based scenes makes the child (>11yrs) to react or respond by involuntary actions due to the divided

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attention by mental process and afferent, efferent nervous conduction biologically.

Example; The child exhibits the fear and anxiety actions (shivering, holding parents hand etc…) while watching the horror scenes in film inside theatre. Commonly, we agree with the child fighting actions during watch of related scenes in film or mostly after watching it, at home among siblings and peer groups at school places too. The stimulation for spontaneous dreams will be among open minded children (thinking, reasoning, thoughts or ideas about others and others related). These raise” WE” feelings to one’s selfconcept. The film makes perfect balance between both set of dreams by enjoyable scenes to entertain the child as induced dream and stimulation, motivation to learn, as spontaneous dreaming at the age >11yrs.

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CHILDREN’S VIEW POINT IN FILM EVALUATION

One of the most important areas of developmental psychology at present is the literature on theory of mind (Premack and woodruff 1978) which is the ability to impute mental status to others and use this information to predict their behavior (filmic role performers).Theory of mind (TOM) is seen as a biologically “Hard-Wired” behavior that emerges of its own accord as the human brain mature. TOM is clearly about other people and it is therefore hard to imagine that the social environment plays no part in its development. Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla and Young Blade (1991) found superior TOM ability in children whose conversations with their mothers contained more abstract psychological descriptions of 19

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people and attributed internal motives to behavior. So, both are inextricably linked.

Theory of mind (TOM) has been studied using a variety of experimental studies. The most commonly used experiments are the appearance-reality distinction and the false belief task.

The appearance-reality distinction is tested using a common object that assumes the form of another object. Example; A sponge, shaped like a rock. Children age below 4 is more likely to describe the object as sponge because it looks like a sponge, even though it shaped like a rock (Flavell and Green 1983).

The false belief experiment (Wimmer and Perner1983) typically involves two puppets, one of whom leaves the room while the other is seen to move an object (doll) from location A to location B. When the other puppet returns, the child is asked for where it will look? The child below 4yrs is more likely to nominate location B instead of location A because the child sees the transfer of location A to B. In short, the child won’t think on others (role performers) point of view or story direction in film.

The child age >11yrs evaluates the film by already known little knowledge about the story or concept referred to as the 20

CINEMA AND CHILDREN PSYCHOLOGY “mere exposure effect”- the idea that familiarity breeds content rather than contempt. Example; Children have little knowledge about animals like elephant, dog, monkey, etc...

Will be applying with film and distinguishes the reality based actions or behavior from imagery set views in film as portrayed in movie “DHURGA” for reality based actions by Baby Shalini and movie “KUTTY SAITHAN” for imaginary visualization.

According to Piaget’s cognitive developmental stages; a) The child age between 5-6yrs evaluate the film based on egocentric, otherwise called pre-operational stage in which the child accepts the audience revealing scenes as their personal evaluation about film due to concentration upon one’s point of view (not the concept or story point of view). In short, certain meaning or depth of concept will be revealed to only audience, not to the story role performers in film, which will be taken as point of view by the child during narration to their peer groups, not to the actual story point of view. b) The child age between 7-10yrs, evaluates the film based on reasoning only on personal experience, 21

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otherwise called concrete-operational stage in which child relates the role performers in film to their real-life people and influence the real- experiencing feel approach in film evaluation. This makes the child to reason out positively for every act carried by the main characters while watching movie “PASANGA”. c) The child age between 11-14yrs, evaluates the film based on ability to reason using abstract premises, otherwise called formal operational stage in which child relates the collective information’s (from parents, elders, peer groups) to filmic information’s and gives evaluation to film. If finds similarity- votes for it and for dissimilarity- opposite to vote even though they have personal experience and learning’s related to it.

Example; when we ask about feedback for watched film out of theatre, the child, gives positive words when they hear positive comments from parents inside theatre. Shaking head or shyness will be for negative comment from parents inside theatre that indicates they need some more time to evaluate film with references.

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PARENTS GUIDE LINES Selection of films subjecting child is significant in which influence the adaptation and learning without reasoning, also wishes formation by internal stimulus.

Taking responsibility in developing healthy internal wishes with applicability in reality.

Avoidance of punishment or lecturing the child for negative ideas from film is needed because children’s are learning from movie without reasoning, in which the learnt information’s cannot be changed through punishments or lectures. If not ends with reduced confidence, roles and responsibility in reality, finally becomes closed mechanical mind throughout life-span. Giving punishments or lecture affects inter-personal relationship between parents and child, where the child tend to do learnt filmic information’s under favorable conditions without parents knowledge.

Child need to be monitored and has the responsibility to remove the child from favorable conditions inducing negative activities. As much as possible direct child to face such favorable circumstance in healthy manner by healthy 23

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relationships, otherwise deviate child’s mind towards healthy attractive things. child should not be under restriction or unrevealed about the film aided learning’s not related to the child’s age because the child tend to be more attracted towards advanced learning due to interest created by age related learning from peer group or society.

Subject child to limited no. of. Movies because film develops suppressed physical activity related to mental intuition due to theatrical physique experience. Example; the child after accident based scene watch from film , develops motive to care for victim but they won’t instead encourages other volunteers to do the care physically to victim, due to physical intuition suppressed theatrical experience (Myer’s Brigg Type Indicator, IPSI preferences during film watch).

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Social issue based films are advanced to child age learning need to be avoided because they gets “WE” feelings towards the issue due to social environment based and cultivate it without reasoning. Example; Murder related films, Jihad’s, terrorism and so on which can be learn when the child becomes adult i.e.) age >20yrs because adulthood period gives applicable knowledge in right identification of good and bad.

Responsibilities to identify the genetic nature of mind (open or closed) and need to train the child for open mind as a preparation for cinema watch.

Parents are responsible for each child’s open questions in distinguishing good and bad in learning. Not negative learning’s as forbidden, but need to give introductory information’s about advanced life learning as a need for awareness to child survival.

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