One area of cognitive development influenc- ing children’s ability to learn from television is the perception of video itself. Some research suggests that children do not begin to discrim- inate between television and real-life events until the early preschool years. For example, Leona Jaglom and Howard Gardner reported qualitative observations of three children from age two to five. They noted that at age two, the children recognized that the television world was contained within the television set but not until they reached age three or four did they realize that the television world could not affect them—that, for example, television characters could.
