van der Molen, J. H. W. & van der Voort, T. H. A. (1998). Children's recall of the news: TV news stories compared with three print versions. Journal of Technology Research and Development, 46(1), 39-52.
A partial replication study was conducted comparing children's recall of news
stories presented via television and via print. Unlike the procedure in previous
experiments, television news stories were compared not only with literal transcripts
of the television narratives, but also with two different "real" newspaper
versions written by journalists. In addition, the study investigated whether
the relative effectiveness of television and print in conveying news information
was dependent on children's reading proficiency. A sample of 144 fourth and
sixth graders was presented with a sequence of five children's news stories,
either in their original television form or in one of the three print versions.
The results of a cued-recall test indicated that children who watched the news
on television remembered the stories better than children who read one of the
three print versions, regardless of their level of reading proficiency.