

{"id":27620,"date":"2025-05-19T10:27:37","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T14:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/?p=27620"},"modified":"2025-06-05T14:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T18:09:16","slug":"exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Play and Children\u2019s Television in the Work of Psychologists Dorothy and Jerome Singer"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"675\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-675x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Dorothy and Jerome Singer. The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, New York.\" class=\"wp-image-27625\" style=\"width:321px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-675x1024.jpg 675w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-198x300.jpg 198w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-768x1165.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-1013x1536.jpg 1013w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-1351x2048.jpg 1351w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-scaled.jpg 1688w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 675px) 100vw, 675px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Dorothy and Jerome Singer. The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>What impact do adults\u2014and the stories, movies, television shows, and games they create\u2014have on children\u2019s imaginative play and development? For decades, researchers explored this question and arrived at a variety of conclusions. But few play scholars of late 20th and early 21st centuries proved more influential on this research than psychologists Dorothy G. (1927\u20132016) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/remembering-jerome-l-singer-psychologist-and-scholar-of-daydreaming-and-play\/\">Jerome L. Singer<\/a> (1924\u20132019). Having grown up in the years before television when radio captured children\u2019s imaginations, the Singers did not see television and new media as inherently negative. But as they noted in their 2005 book<em> Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age<\/em>, they worried that children growing up in a culture awash in television, video games, and later the internet were in danger of being left \u201cadrift in cyberspace.\u201d As they observed in their research, children who watched a lot of television (three or more hours per day) weren\u2019t using their imaginations in their play as much as those who watched less (one hour or less per day). Similarly, they asserted that, in their pretend play, children increasingly acted out stories and characters predetermined by the media they consumed rather than formed from their own imaginations. To help address these concerns, the Singers believed that adults should create better television shows to help enhance children\u2019s imaginative play and that caregivers and educators had a special role to play by guiding children through what some deemed a vast wasteland of media and television programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2021, the Singer family donated to The Strong a collection of Dorothy and Jerome\u2019s books and professional papers that help document the couple\u2019s significant work as play scholars, with an emphasis on their roles as codirectors of the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center. A deep dive into this collection illustrates (among other things) that through their work at the Center the Singers sought to help shape children\u2019s television through their own research on kids and adults; consulting with television producers and evaluating their programming; and advising parents, educators, healthcare professionals, and policymakers on children and youth television usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The massive proliferation of television in American homes in the 1950s and 1960s spurred many media scholars to study its potential effects. As pioneers in an emerging scholarly field, the Singers wondered if the medium could help educate children and enhance their creativity. In 1974, the couple began studying the children\u2019s public television program Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood (1968\u20132001), a show in which host Fred Rogers brought viewers into a fictional \u201cneighborhood of make-believe\u201d populated by puppets. This research suggested that television programs like <em>Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood<\/em> could enhance children\u2019s imaginative play. But the show was most effective if parents watched television with children to act as, what the Singers called, \u201cintermediaries\u201d or \u201ctranslators.\u201d Backed by these conclusions, the Singers founded the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center in 1975. Over the next nearly four decades, the Singers published dozens of articles and books including, <em>Television, Imagination<\/em>, and<em> Aggression: A Study of Preschoolers<\/em> (1981), <em>The House of Make-Believe: Children\u2019s Play and the Developing Imagination <\/em>(1990), and the edited <em>Handbook of Children<\/em> <em>and the Media <\/em>(2001 and 2012), which examined, at least in part, television\u2019s potential role in children\u2019s development.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"808\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2-Barney-808x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Barney (center back), Baby Bop (right), BJ (left), and Riff (center front), 2006. The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, New York.\" class=\"wp-image-27624\" style=\"width:321px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2-Barney-808x1024.jpg 808w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2-Barney-237x300.jpg 237w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2-Barney-768x974.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2-Barney-1211x1536.jpg 1211w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2-Barney-1615x2048.jpg 1615w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2-Barney-scaled.jpg 2019w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 808px) 100vw, 808px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Barney (center back), Baby Bop (right), BJ (left), and Riff (center front), 2006. The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"747\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/3-Barney-Friends-as-Education-and-Entertainment-94-STUDY-747x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\u201cBarney &amp; Friends as Education and Entertainment, Phase 3, National Study: Can Preschoolers Learn through Exposure to Barney &amp; Friends,\u201d 1994. The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, New York.\" class=\"wp-image-27623\" style=\"width:321px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/3-Barney-Friends-as-Education-and-Entertainment-94-STUDY-747x1024.jpg 747w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/3-Barney-Friends-as-Education-and-Entertainment-94-STUDY-219x300.jpg 219w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/3-Barney-Friends-as-Education-and-Entertainment-94-STUDY-768x1052.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/3-Barney-Friends-as-Education-and-Entertainment-94-STUDY-1121x1536.jpg 1121w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/3-Barney-Friends-as-Education-and-Entertainment-94-STUDY-1495x2048.jpg 1495w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/3-Barney-Friends-as-Education-and-Entertainment-94-STUDY-scaled.jpg 1869w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 747px) 100vw, 747px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cBarney &amp; Friends as Education and Entertainment, Phase 3, National Study: Can Preschoolers Learn through Exposure to Barney &amp; Friends,\u201d 1994. The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>The Singer\u2019s earliest research on specific children\u2019s television programs started with <em>Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood<\/em>, but it didn\u2019t end there. The Center also studied shows such as <em>Sesame Street<\/em> (1969\u2013present), <em>Captain Kangaroo<\/em> (1955\u20131984), and <em>Degrassi Junior High<\/em> (1987-1989). The couple had a particularly important influence on <em>Barney &amp; Friends<\/em>, a program aimed at two- to five-year-old children and that centered on a costumed purple dinosaur named Barney. Launched in 1992 by Connecticut Public Television, the show remained on air until 2010. The Singers\u2019 papers contain a bounty of materials related to the series, including research studies, content analyses, episode evaluation reports, research proposals, season synopses, scripts, and correspondence. All these materials paint a vivid picture of how much work went into producing a television series backed by research on the developmental benefits of watching <em>Barney &amp; Friends<\/em>. But as the Singers contended, some of those benefits depended on how children watched.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"715\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/4-TVGuide-715x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\u201cReport Card: The Best for Kids 6-11\u201d from \u201cParents\u2019 Guide to Children\u2019s Television\u201d in TV Guide, March 3, 1990. The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, New York.\" class=\"wp-image-27622\" style=\"width:321px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/4-TVGuide-715x1024.jpg 715w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/4-TVGuide-209x300.jpg 209w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/4-TVGuide-768x1100.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/4-TVGuide-1072x1536.jpg 1072w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/4-TVGuide-1430x2048.jpg 1430w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/4-TVGuide-scaled.jpg 1787w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 715px) 100vw, 715px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cReport Card: The Best for Kids 6-11\u201d from \u201cParents\u2019 Guide to Children\u2019s Television\u201d in TV Guide, March 3, 1990. The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>The Center focused part of its resources on working with caregivers, educators, and other adults on how to get those benefits from TV. Along with research partner Dianne M. Zuckerman, the Singers published <em>Teaching TV: How to Use TV to Your Child\u2019s Advantage<\/em> (1981), <em>Getting the Most Out of the TV<\/em> (1981), and <em>The Parent\u2019s Guide: Use TV to Your Child\u2019s Advantage<\/em> (1990). These books aimed to assist caregivers and teachers with making sense of television and adopting strategies to harness it as an educational tool. In the early 1980s, Dorothy also contributed a monthly column on \u201cTelevision and the Family\u201d in the popular magazine <em>TV Guide<\/em>. In 1991, the Singers published <em>Critical Viewers: A Partnership Between Schools and Television Professionals<\/em>, which sparked the development of teacher and parent workshops to help train adults to make these television programs more interactive for the children that watched them. The next year, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting even commissioned the Center to prepare the report \u201cA Role for Children\u2019s Television in the Enhancement of Children\u2019s Readiness to Learn\u201d for the U.S. Congress. Taken together, these books, columns, and reports show the broad influence the Singers had on how adults viewed and understood children\u2019s television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On one level, this collection of the Singers\u2019 books and professional papers provides us with a unique window into the relationship between play and children\u2019s television in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. But on another level, the collection demonstrates the Singers\u2019 life work and their sincere commitment to helping adults support children\u2019s imaginative play and development. As the couple observed in <em>The House of Make-Believe<\/em>, when grownups think back to their childhood pretend play, those memories are \u201coften associated with a special person who encouraged play, told fantastic stories, or modeled play by initiating games,\u201d and who \u201cabove all showed a trusting, loving acceptance of children and their capacity for playfulness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What impact do adults\u2014and the stories, movies, television shows, and games they create\u2014have on children\u2019s imaginative play and development? For decades, researchers explored this question and arrived at a variety of conclusions. But few play scholars of late 20th and early 21st centuries proved more influential on this research than psychologists Dorothy G. (1927\u20132016) and Jerome L. Singer (1924\u20132019). Having grown up in the years before television when radio captured children\u2019s imaginations, the Singers did not see television and new [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"9236,7519,9011,25432,8086,8570","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-brian-sutton-smith-library-and-archives-of-play-at-the-strong","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Exploring Play and Children\u2019s Television in the Work of Psychologists Dorothy and Jerome Singer - The Strong National Museum of Play<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exploring Play and Children\u2019s Television in the Work of Psychologists Dorothy and Jerome Singer - The Strong National Museum of Play\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What impact do adults\u2014and the stories, movies, television shows, and games they create\u2014have on children\u2019s imaginative play and development? For decades, researchers explored this question and arrived at a variety of conclusions. But few play scholars of late 20th and early 21st centuries proved more influential on this research than psychologists Dorothy G. (1927\u20132016) and Jerome L. Singer (1924\u20132019). Having grown up in the years before television when radio captured children\u2019s imaginations, the Singers did not see television and new [...]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strong National Museum of Play\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheStrongMuseum\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-05-19T14:27:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-06-05T18:09:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1688\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeremy Saucier\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@museumofplay\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@museumofplay\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jeremy Saucier\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jeremy Saucier\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/#\/schema\/person\/3ada75a1d92fd0afb73ab42e94032de6\"},\"headline\":\"Exploring Play and Children\u2019s Television in the Work of Psychologists Dorothy and Jerome Singer\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-05-19T14:27:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-06-05T18:09:16+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/\"},\"wordCount\":1129,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-675x1024.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/\",\"name\":\"Exploring Play and Children\u2019s Television in the Work of Psychologists Dorothy and Jerome Singer - The Strong National Museum of Play\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-675x1024.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-05-19T14:27:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-06-05T18:09:16+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/exploring-play-and-childrens-television-in-the-work-of-psychologists-dorothy-and-jerome-singer\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1-Dorothy-and-Jerome-Photo-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":1688,\"height\":2560,\"caption\":\"Dorothy and Jerome Singer. 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