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that this guilt occurs much more among middle-class viewers than among less affluent
ones.
D What is it about TV that has such a hold on us? In part, the attraction seems to spring
from our biological 'orienting response/ First described by Ivan Pavlov in 1927, the
orienting response is our instinctive visual or auditory reaction to any sudden or novel
stimulus. It is part of our evolutionary heritage, a built-in sensitivity to movement and
potential predatory threats. In 1986 Byron Reeves of Stanford University, Esther Thorson
of the University of Missouri and their colleagues began to study whether the simple
formal features of television
—cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises — activate the
orienting response, thereby keeping attention on the screen. By watching how brain
waves were affected by formal features, the researchers concluded that these stylistic
tricks can indeed trigger involuntary responses and 'derive their attentional value through
the evolutionary significance of detecting movement.... It is the form, not the content, of
television that is unique.
E The natural attraction to television's sound and light starts very early in life. Dafna
Lemish of Tel Aviv University has described babies at six to eight weeks attending to
television. We have observed slightly older infants who, when lying on their backs on the
floor, crane their necks around 180 degrees to catch what light through yonder window
breaks. This inclination suggests how deeply rooted the orienting response is.
F The Experience Sampling Method permitted us to look closely at most every domain of
everyday life: working, eating, reading, talking to friends, playing a sport, and so on. We
found that heavy viewers report feeling significantly more anxious and less happy than
light viewers do in unstructured situations, such as doing nothing, daydreaming or waiting
in line. The difference widens when the viewer is alone. Subsequently, Robert D.
Mcllwraith of the University of Manitoba extensively studied those who called themselves
TV addicts on surveys. On a measure called the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory
(SIPI), he found that the self-described addicts are more easily bored and distracted and
have poorer attentional control than the non-addicts. The addicts said they used TV to
distract themselves from unpleasant thoughts and to fill time. Other studies over the years