Television Viewing at Home: Distances and Visual Angles Adopted by Children and Adults

Abstract

Television viewing distances, visual angles, and viewing angles were calculated for 217 children and 119 adults from 78 families. The data were obtained from time-lapse videotapes automatically recorded in the families' homes over 10 day periods. Viewing distance increases with age and visual angle decreases with age. Viewers aged 17 years and younger viewed at an average distance of 225.3 cm, at an average visual angle of 12.3 deg., and at an average viewing angle of 23.7 deg. Adult viewers watched TV at an average distance of 336.8 cm, an average visual angle of 6.6 deg., and at an average viewing angle of 23.3 deg. The best predictors of viewing location were percent of time the viewer watched TV from furniture, room area, and screen width.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anderson

D.R.

(1983). Home television viewing by preschool children and their families. Presented at biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit.

Anderson

D.R.

(in press). On-line cognitive processing of television. In Mitchell

Alwitt

(Eds.), Psychological processes and advertising effects: Theory, research, and advertising effects. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Anderson

D.R.

Field

D.E.

(1983). Children's attention to television: Implications for production. In Meyer

(Ed.), Children and the formal features of television. Munich: Saur.

Ditchburn (1974). Eye movements and visual perception. London: Oxford University Press.

Enoch

J.M.

(1959). Effect of the size of a complex display upon visual search. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 49, 280–286.

Hirning

C.R.

Aitken

J.H.

(1982). Cathode-ray tube X-ray emission standard for video display terminals. Helath Physics, 43, 727–731.

Hollingshead

A. B.

(1975). Four factor index of social status. New Haven: Yale University, Dept. of Sociology.

McVey

G.F.

(1970). Television: Some viewer-display considerations. AV Communication Review, 18, 277–290.

Moody

(1980). Growing up on TV. New York: Times Books.

10.

Nashel

D.J.

Korman

L.Y.

Bowman

J.O.

(1982). Radiation hazard of video screens. New England Journal of Medicine, 307, 891.

11.

National Center for Radiological Health (1968). A summary of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area survey of color television receivers. Radiological Health Data and Reports, 9, 531–538.

12.

Rutstein

(1971). Go watch TV. New York: Sheed & Ward.

13.

Saida

Ikeda

(1979). Useful visual field size for pattern perception. Perception & Psychophysics, 25, 119–125.

14.

Smith

S.L.

(1979). Letter size and legibility. Human Factors, 21, 661–670.

15.

Winn

(1977). The plug-in drug. New York: Viking.