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How powerful is Television?

(From Slate Magazine) “Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of three.”

I’m not an expert on autism, but recently I took a refresher psychology class at The College of Southern Idaho. When we arrived at the chapter on dreams, something reminded me of the textbook from my previous psyche class, three decades ago. Back then, a statement claimed that 95 percent of us Americans dream in black and white. That study was from the early 60's, an era when we watched over 90 percent of TV shows through black and white sets.

The textbook from my recent CSI class, posited precisely the opposite: that 95 percent of us now dream in living color! What was there to explain for this grand shift? Is there a correlation between the tones of Americans dreams and the types of TV’s they own?

This made me wonder: Is television high-definition hypnotism, a force so powerful, that not only does it connect as a crucial cause of autism, when used as a primary babysitter; but also that its programming transforms our dream colors?

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