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An experiment on consumers' behavior was carried out in a new field context. According to a random assignment, 60 customers from ages 12 to 14 years who entered a candy store were exposed to Top Forty music which was usually played in this store, music from cartoons (Captain Flame, Candy, Olive & Tom, etc.), or no music. Analysis showed that customers spent significantly more time in the store when cartoon music was played, but the two styles of music were not related to the amount of money spent.

We describe a pilot study to investigate whether drawing "Thomas the Tank Engine" could be as effective a measure of developmental progress as the Goodenough-Harris Draw A Man test against the ThOMAs test (The Other Means of Assessment), with internal validation. The study included 95 children aged between 3 and 11 years of age, including a subgroup of 13 children with registered special needs from community and general pediatric clinics within Birmingham, UK, as a means of validation. There was no significant evidence that ThOMAS was either culturally or sex biased. Using regression analysis, nine items were found to correlate highly with actual age, and their total score gave a correlation of 0.563 with age. Adding further items did not increase this. After being converted into age-standardized scores, ThOMAS was as sensitive and specific as the Draw A Man test, and more so above a defined age-standardized threshold. This pilot study suggests that drawing Thomas the Tank Engine would appear to be as sensitive and specific a means of identifying children with special needs as the Goodenough-Harris Draw A Man test. The relatively small sample size means that further research is necessary to further define the age standardizations and to refine the ThOMAs test.

Funniness ratings of cartoon humour by 366 university students showed no differences for age, sex, and region of origin, except for higher scores by men on work-related items. Ratings appear to be largely uninfluenced by factors other than how inherently amusing the items seem to be.

The governments of South Asia designed the 1990's as the Decade of the Girl Child, in order to confront the extreme discrimination faced by girls in the region. A range of research studies undertaken by UNICEF and other agencies leading up to the Decade had documented the aspects and degrees of discrimination against girls in the region-with the most severe conditions in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.

Young adults with intellectual disability, 15 with IQs of 55 to 75 and 15 with IQs of 40 to 54, rated 12 cartoon riddles of six levels of difficulty. Mirth and comprehension were also scored. Analyses indicated that participants considered the jokes funny but there was a strong tendency to respond to the visual aspects of the jokes rather than to the auditory aspects.

Previous research suggests that children's understanding that television is fictional may be dependent on various factors inherent in televised events. 36 children, 4- to 6-yr.-old, were asked to judge the reality of specific televised events shown via videotape. The events varied in aggressiveness, format, and type of character shown. While age and sex differences were absent, children's judgments were dependent on the format of the televised events (cartoon versus noncartoon) rather than other variables. Implications for research on children's learning of televised aggression and prosocial behaviors are discussed.

The effects of simple cartoons on pupil size were examined. Each of the 11 subjects was presented three cartoons for 10-sec. with a 5-sec. control period between the presentations. All subjects received the same task condition. When the presentation was complete, each subject ranked the three cartoons to show their preference on the dimension of humor. The data produced significant correlation between the rank order and the pupillary dilatation. Means of pupils size for the cartoons were also significantly different from control means.