Comparison of Live Actor Versus Animated Character Formats for Video-Based
Prevention/Social-Emotional Learning Curricula
Maurice J. Elias, Ph.D.
Keli Bryan
Rutgers University
There is a critical need, amidst urban school reform efforts, to prepare students for their
critical role as citizens in our society. This role in inextricably bound to children’s literacy
development, as the latter is essential for gathering information needed for complex social,
community, familial and personal decision making. Further, from the perspective of this project,
children’s literacy skills may well be linked to their emotional intelligence, to their socialemotional understanding of the world around them. Why? Much of literacy content presumes
developmentally critical social understandings. Beyond the vocabulary of reading, there is a
social grammar that is essential to making true sense of the words, sentences, phrases, and
paragraphs. This depends greatly on children’s visual literacy and social-emotional
understanding. Relatedly, the skills of delay of gratification, self- control, persistence, affect
recognition, emotional regulation, goal setting, teamwork, problem solving, decision making, and
conflict resolution are necessary to support the actual mechanical skills of reading. Children
have to sit, try to understand, free themselves from distractions, and realize how what they are
doing is connected to broader goals than “getting finished” as soon as possible.
The Plainfield Project is completing its fifth year at the time of this writing, May 2003. A
central focus has been examining the question of what happens when literacy-enriched socialemotional skill building is added systematically to the curriculum and instruction of urban school
reform over a period of years. The project is conceptualized as a seven year project at a
minimum, to bring SEL into urban education from kindergarten to grade 12. In many ways, this
project is a complement to the Comer process, in that its focus is on the curriculum and
instructional facets of schooling, rather than the overall organization of the school itself. The
latter is being handled in the context of urban whole school reform models that individual
schools have adopted as part of being in a high risk, or “Abbott,” district in New Jersey.
The early childhood years are being recognized as the most critical time for preventive
and competence building intervention. If children lack skills necessary for interacting
successfully with others, avoiding confrontations, and being independent thinkers and problemsolvers, then they become likely candidates for a range of negative behaviors. Also, they become
more likely to develop stereotypes and prejudices based on bias and self-fulfilling prophecies,
thus contributing to the disharmony that exists in so many schools and communities. Finding
effective formats for intervention is a high priority, especially for low-income minority youth
toward whom relatively few well studied interventions have been directed.
The current report shares the results of an initial study comparing two innovative formats
for delivering social decision making and related skills development to urban second graders.
The formats are live actor and computer animation-based videos, respectively. The focal
question is whether or not children would be as responsive to computer-generated animated
characters as to live characters. The results have considerable implications for the design of
intervention materials.
Methods
The participants in this study were 211 second grade students (121 female, 90 male) from
five elementary schools in an urban school district in central New Jersey. All of the schools
implemented the "Talking with TJ" program during the 2001-2002 school year. The second
grade "Talking with TJ" program consisted of 21 lessons thematically based on three video
stories. The Talking with TJ series was developed under the auspices of the Hallmark Corporate
Foundation in 1994 at a cost of $6,000,000 to promote needed competencies and interpersonal
skills in young children, and as a primary prevention program for youth violence. It incorporates
both readiness skills and the use of problem solving steps from the nationally validated Social
Decision Making/Social Problem Solving Program as key components. The TJ series
emphasizes the importance of cooperation and teamwork by focusing on three skill areas: (1)
making group plans; (2) appreciating differences and including people of diverse backgrounds in
group activities as opportunities for learning; and (3) playing as a cooperative team in
competitive situations. Each skill area is addressed in a video (“What’s the Plan?”, “All
Together Now!”, and “Team Spirit”). Skills are reinforced through “power phrases” that are
part of the discussion that surrounds each of the videos. “Talk Time” is included midway
through the video, and a discussion portion afterwards allows kids to relate the video to things
that have happened in their own lives.
Eight schools in the district implemented the curriculum using the original, live-actor
version of the videos, and two of the schools (n=88) implemented the curriculum using the
animated version of the video. The animated version was professionally created and was based
on the original scripts, character, scenery, framing, and pacing of the original videos, except the
characters and settings were animated instead of actors. Voices of the main characters were
matched to the originals as closely as possible. Thus, to the extent possible, the essential
difference between the live actor and animated videos was the format. Second graders were
chosen because they had no prior exposure to the TJ series and did not know about any version
other than the one they saw. It was also for that reason that intact schools were used, rather than
have experimental and control conditions within the same school. The two schools chosen for
the experimental condition were the first to volunteer to substitute the animated version for the
original. For this study, three of the eight remaining schools were chosen as control schools
(n=123) because of their similarity to the experimental schools on degree of teacher
implementation of the curriculum.
The instructional technique utilized as the conceptual basis for video and computer based
delivery systems for promoting social decision making/social problem solving and socialemotional skills is called TVDRP: television, or other audiovisual media, discussion conducted
with open-ended questions designed to stimulate critical thinking and rehearsal and guided
practice, often involving role play or other experiential, hands-on activities to make learning
more concrete and promote integration and generalization.
The mechanism by which TVDRP works reflects the following: (a) the value of televised
or computer-delivered media as a means of focusing attention and exercising a calming and
relaxing effect, even for children with neurological or attention deficits; (b) the stimulation of
thoughtful problem solving through discussions built on open-ended questions and “dialoguing”;
(c) the motoric and interpersonal benefit of rehearsal and guided practice in solidifying behavior
sequences and making skill transfer and generalization more likely. Researchers have found that
the combination of all three modalities considerably exceeds any two of the approaches together.
The TVDRP format was constant across conditions.
At the end of the school year, students completed a 42 item Student Satisfaction Survey
designed to assess children’s receptiveness and responsiveness to the videos and curriculum.
Specifically, the survey assessed their enjoyment of the videos and curriculum, their perception
of the characters, their fondness of the characters, and self-perceived social and emotional skill
development. On the first twenty-two items, students were asked to respond "yes ", "maybe", or
"no" to questions such as "Was ‘talking with TJ’ fun to do?" and "how much would you like to
be like TJ?". On the last twenty items, students were asked to respond "yes " or "no" to questions
regarding how "Talking with TJ" helped them behave differently. The student satisfaction
surveys were included as part of a larger assessment package and distributed to the teachers to
administer to their classroom.
Results
The findings indicated that both groups of students had a high degree of satisfaction with
the components of the TJ curriculum, and especially the videos. There were very few differences
between students’ reactions to the live actors and the animated characters. There were no gender
differences in the results. Among the most important questions where difference might have
been obtained are the following. Note that Yes = 1, No = 2; TJ is the main character, an AfricanAmerican, wheel-chair bound DJ who serves as the on-air facilitator of problem solving when
kids call in problems to her on her radio show (“Talking with TJ”); Jeff is her engineer, a
Causian teenager who does not speak much; Ray Dio is the station manager, who is a Latino
adult and serves as TJ’s mentor.
1. Was Talking with TJ fun to do?
Actors = 1.11
Animated = 1.08 Overall = 1.10
2. Did you learn some new things from Talking with TJ?
Actors = 1.16
Animated = 1.16 Overall = 1.16
3. Did you like the TJ videos?
Actors = 1.13
Animated = 1.10 Overall = 1.12
4. Do you like TJ?
Actors = 1.06
Animated = 1.12 Overall = 1.09
5. Do you like Jeff?
Actors = 1.47
Animated = 1.60 Overall = 1.53
6. Do you like Ray Dio?
Actors = 1.43
Animated = 1.42 Overall = 1.43
7. How much would you like to be like TJ?
Actors = 1.41
Animated = 1.59 Overall = 1.49
8. Do you think TJ gives good advice?
Actors = 1.07
Animated = 1.08 Overall = 1.07
9. Do you think TJ cares about kids your age?
Actors = 1.10
Animated = 1.14 Overall = 1.12
10. How helpful do you think TJ is?
Actors = 1.11
Animated = 1.03 Overall = 1.08
11.Did you show TJ handouts to anyone at home?
Actors = 1.65
Animated = 1.42 Overall = 1.55
12. Did you tell anyone at home about Talking with TJ?
Actors = 1.57
Animated = 1.31 Overall = 1.46
In addition, students were asked about ways in which the talking with TJ program might
have helped them in the following ways:
How do you think Talking with TJ helped you?
A. Get to know each other better
B. Work better in groups
C. Handle my problems better
D. Respect my classmates
E. Stay calmer
F. Plan better
G. Ask for help if I need help
H. Give help to others
I. Say “sorry” if I am mean to someone
J. Not make fun of other kids
K. Show more caring for others
L. Understand what I am reading
M. Be more responsible
N. Show more respect for others
O.
P.
Q.
R.
S.
T.
Behave in kinder ways
Work better in teams
Use fewer put-downs
Give more put-ups
Feel better about talking to my teacher about my problems
Be a happier person
A summary score combining all of the responses about ways TJ was helpful showed that
while both versions were viewed as highly helpful (Actors = 22.00; Animated = 21.07; Overall
= 21.61; maximum positive score = 20; maximum negative score = 40), the animated version
was seen as significantly more helpful in a condition (Actors/Animated videos) by gender
ANOVA, F (3, 52) = 2.92, p<.04. The main differentiating items were G, J, N, and P.
Implications
Thus a fundamental premise underlying this study was tested and the data suggest
strongly that urban second grade students perceive an animated version of Talking with TJ videos
to be as engaging as the live-actor version. This implies that developers of social-emotional
learning programs for young children should consider using animation in that it allows for
continuity of characters over time, without worrying about them aging, as happens with live
actors.