Day3 Children and Advertising 儿童

启德国际教育规划院：托福阅读英文及中文翻译Day3

Day 3   Children andAdvertising

Young children are trusting of commercial advertisementsin the media, and advertisers have sometimes been accused of taking advantageof this trusting outlook. The Independent Television Commission, regulator oftelevision advertising in the United Kingdom, has criticized advertisers for"misleadingness"—creating a wrong impression either intentionally orunintentionally—in an effort to control advertisers' use of techniques thatmake it difficult for children to judge the true size, action, performance, orconstruction of a toy.

General concern about misleading tactics that advertisersemploy is centered on the use of exaggeration. Consumer protection groups andparents believe that children are largely ill-equipped to recognize suchtechniques and that often exaggeration is used at the expense of productinformation. Claims such as "the best" or "better than" canbe subjective and misleading; even adults may be unsure as to their meaning.They represent the advertiser's opinions about the qualities of their productsor brand and, as a consequence, are difficult to verify. Advertisers sometimesoffset or counterbalance an exaggerated claim with a disclaimer—a qualificationor condition on the claim. For example, the claim that breakfast cereal has ahealth benefit may be accompanied by the disclaimer "when part of anutritionally balanced breakfast." However, research has shown thatchildren often have difficulty understanding disclaimers: children mayinterpret the phrase "when part of a nutritionally balancedbreakfast" to mean that the cereal is required as a necessary part of abalanced breakfast. The author George Comstock suggested that less than aquarter of children between the ages of six and eight years old understoodstandard disclaimers used in many toy advertisements and that disclaimers aremore readily comprehended when presented in both audio and visual formats.Nevertheless, disclaimers are mainly presented in audio format only.

Fantasy is one of the more common techniques inadvertising that could possibly mislead a young audience. Child-orientedadvertisements are more likely to include magic and fantasy than advertisementsaimed at adults. In a content analysis of Canadian television, the authorStephen Kline observed that nearly all commercials for character toys featuredfantasy play. Children have strong imaginations and the use of fantasy bringstheir ideas to life, but children may not be adept enough to realize that whatthey are viewing is unreal. Fantasy situations and settings are frequently usedto attract children's attention, particularly in food advertising.Advertisements for breakfast cereals have, for many years, been found to beespecially fond of fantasy techniques, with almost nine out of ten includingsuch content. Generally, there is uncertainty as to whether very young childrencan distinguish between fantasy and reality in advertising. Certainly, rationalappeals in advertising aimed at children are limited, as most advertisementsuse emotional and indirect appeals to psychological states or associations.

The use of celebrities such as singers and movie stars iscommon in advertising. The intention is for the positively perceived attributesof the celebrity to be transferred to the advertised product and for the two tobecome automatically linked in the audience's mind. In children's advertising,the "celebrities" are often animated figures from popular cartoons.In the recent past, the role of celebrities in advertising to children hasoften been conflated with the concept of host selling. Host selling involvesblending advertisements with regular programming in a way that makes itdifficult to distinguish one from the other. Host selling occurs, for example,when a children's show about a cartoon lion contains an ad in which the samelion promotes a breakfast cereal. The psychologist Dale Kunkel showed that thepractice of host selling reduced children's ability to distinguish betweenadvertising and program material. It was also found that older childrenresponded more positively to products in host selling advertisements.

Regarding the appearance of celebrities in advertisementsthat do not involve host selling, the evidence is mixed. Researcher CharlesAtkin found that children believe that the characters used to advertisebreakfast cereals are knowledgeable about cereals, and children accept suchcharacters as credible sources of nutritional information. This finding waseven more marked for heavy viewers of television. In addition, children feelvalidated in their choice of a product when a celebrity endorses that product.A study of children in Hong Kong, however, found that the presence ofcelebrities in advertisements could negatively affect the children'sperceptions of a product if the children did not like the celebrity inquestion.

参考译文：儿童和广告

儿童信任媒体中的商业广告，可是广告商们有时会因利用这种信任常常受到指责。调控英国电视广告的独立电视委员会批评广告商们的误导作用——有意或无意地给人一种错误印象,努力控制广告商们利用技巧，因为技术处理之后的广告会使得儿童很难判断玩具的真实尺寸、功能、外观和构造。

人们普遍担心广告商夸大其词的误导策略。消费者保护组织和家长们认为大部分孩子不具备识别这种手段的能力，而且他们认为这种夸大其词掩盖了相关产品信息。声称产品“最好”或“好于其他产品”都是主观性强且容易产生误导即使是成年人可能也很难判别。广告语代表了广告商们对他们产品或品牌的看法，因此，这很难验证。广告商有时会通过补偿或者免责的形式来平衡夸大的说辞。举个例子，称早餐食用谷物食品对健康是有益的广告可能会附带一个免责声明“前提是早餐营养要均衡”。然而，研究发现儿童很难理解这类免责声明：儿童会将“前提是早餐营养要均衡”理解为谷类食物是均衡早餐营养的必需成份。作者GeorgeComstock指出，六到八岁的儿童中能够理解大多数玩具广告的免责声明的不到四分之一。同时他也指出，如果免责声明以声音和视觉的形式同时呈现时就容易被理解。然而，它们多是以声音的形式出现。

虚构是广告中常见的一种手段，很容易误导年轻观众。跟面向成人的广告相比，面向儿童的广告更有可能包含魔幻和虚构成分。通过分析加拿大的电视内容，作家Stephen kline注意到几乎所有的角色扮演玩具的商业广告都是以虚构效果呈现。儿童有着丰富的想象力，虚构手段将他们的想法带入生活，但儿童可能无法认识到他们所看到的并不真实。虚构的情景和环境常常用于吸引儿童的注意，特别是食物广告。多年以来，谷类早餐的广告尤其钟爱虚构手段，十有八九都包含虚构内容。一般来看，幼童是否能够区别广告中的虚构和现实部分仍然不能确定。当然，可以确定的是，由于大部分广告都采取情感吸引产生精神共鸣的手段，面向儿童的广告中理性吸引就显得很受限制。

名人代言在广告中非常普遍，如歌星和电影明星。目的是将人们对名人的正面态度转化为对广告产品的评价，使两者在观众的脑海中自动产生联系。在儿童广告中，“名人”通常是流行卡通片中的卡通人物。在过去几年里，儿童广告中名人的作用常常与“主角”销售理念混为一谈。“主角”销售混合了常规广告，因此两者很难区分。举例来说，当关于一个卡通狮子的儿童节目中出现一则广告，而这则广告中是同一个卡通狮子在兜售谷类早餐的话，这就属于“主角”销售。心理学家DaleKunkel指出，“主角”销售大大降低了儿童辨别广告和节目内容的能力。人们还发现，年龄较大的儿童对“主角”销售的广告更为认可。

至于名人代言广告并不涉及“主角”销售，证据是复杂的。研究员CharlesAtkin发现，儿童认为卡通人物对广告中的谷类早餐非常了解，并且认为它们是营养信息的可靠来源。这一发现对沉溺电视的观众来说是一种警示。除此以外，名人代言的产品儿童也会非常认同。然而，对香港儿童的研究发现，如果儿童不喜欢广告中的名人，那么他代言的广告可能反而在儿童中产生负面影响。