Explicit and implicit television cognition of left-behind children in China

In this study we investigated the television cognition of 53 “left-behind” children. We examined explicit cognition using the Television Virtual and Real Life Questionnaire (Geng & Zhou, 2011) and used the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT; Sriram & Greenwald, 2009) to examine implicit cognition toward television virtual and real life. The results showed that the left-behind children in our study had weak explicit abilities to discriminate between television virtual and real life and had relatively strong implicit abilities to discriminate between television virtual and real life. In other words, their explicit and implicit discrimination abilities were different. Based on our findings, we give suggestions about education aimed at improving the television cognition of left-behind children.