According to Heather L. Kirkorian and her fellow researchers Ellen Wartella and Daniel Anderson in 2008, since television appeared in homes beginning in the mid-20th century, critics have often expressed concern about its impact on viewers, especially children, who as Kirkorian argued, are "active media users" [15] by the age of three. Researchers believed that there were links between television viewing and children's cognitive and learning skills and that what children watched may be more important than how much they watched it. She reported that up until the 1980s, researchers had only an implicit theory about how viewers watched television, and that young children were cognitively passive viewers and controlled by "salient attention-eliciting features" [15] like sound effects and fast movement. As a result, most researchers believed that television interfered with cognition and reflection and as a result, children could not learn from and process television. [15] In the early 1980s, however, new theories about how young children watch television suggested that attention in children as young as two-years old were largely guided by program content. [16] Conception [ edit ] Heffernan, Jennifer (26 January 2007). "Calling Blue: And on That Farm He Had a Cellphone". The New York Times . Retrieved 5 June 2021.

According to Tracy, Wilder, who had a doctorate in educational psychology, reinvented the role of research in children's television, and helped train the writers and animators to trust and use research. Wilder also developed the curriculum that guided the program's script development and implemented its formative research. [34] [35] The 2002 studies demonstrated that experience with watching one TV series affects how children watch other programs, especially in the way they interact with them. [141] They also showed that since children are selective in the material they attend to and that their interaction increases with comprehension and mastery, children tend to pay more attention to novel information and interact more with material they have seen before and mastered. According to Crawley and her colleagues, Blue's Clues demonstrated that television could empower and influence children's long-term motivation for and a love of learning. As they stated, "One need only to watch children watch Blue’s Clues to realize that they respond to it with enormous enthusiasm". [146] Pedersen, Erik (26 August 2019). " 'Blue's Clues & You' Teaser & Premiere Date: Ex-Hosts Return For First Episode". Deadline. Archived from the original on 2019-08-27 . Retrieved 29 December 2021.a b c d Mifflin, Lawrie (3 August 1997). "The Joy of Repetition, Repetition, Repetition". The New York Times . Retrieved 6 June 2021. Lawrie Mifflin (August 9, 1996). "U.S. Mandates Educational TV for Children". The New York Times. p.16 . Retrieved March 14, 2010. Kirkorian, Heather L.; Ellen A. Wartella; Daniel R. Anderson. (Spring 2008). "Media and Young Children's Learning". The Future of Children 18 (1): 39–61 doi:10.1353/foc.0.0002 The pace of Blue's Clues was deliberate, and its material was presented clearly. [42] Similar to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, [87] this was done was in the use of pauses that were "long enough to give the youngest time to think, short enough for the oldest not to get bored". [39] The length of the pauses, which was estimated from formative research, gave children enough time to process the information and solve the problem. After pausing, child voice-overs provided the answers so that they were given to children who had not come up with the solution and helped encourage viewer participation. Researcher Alisha M. Crawley and her colleagues stated that although earlier programs sometimes invited overt audience participation, Blue's Clues was "unique in making overt involvement a systematic research-based design element". [69] Blue's Clues also differed from Sesame Street by not using cultural references or humor aimed at adults, as this could confuse preschoolers but, instead, made the show literal, which the producers felt would better hold the children's attention. [88] The structure of each episode was repetitive, designed to provide preschoolers with comfort and predictability. [84] Repetition of the same skills used in different contexts or games within and across episodes encouraged the mastery of thinking skills and the approach to content within an episode was consistent with learning theory that emphasized situated cognition and provided all viewers, no matter their age or abilities, with repeated opportunities to try to solve the problems presented. [34] [89]

Lee, Felicia R. (22 April 2000). "A Children's Adventure in a Deaf World". The New York Times . Retrieved 29 December 2021. Garcia, Cathy Rose A. (28 October 2013). "Meet the woman behind Blue's Clues, Cha-Ching". ABS-CBN Corporation. Quezon City, Philippines . Retrieved 6 June 2021. According to Dhingra and her colleagues, the researchers represented the preschool viewer. After coming up with an idea for an episode, the writers met with Alice Wilder, head of the research department for Blue's Clues, to discuss their idea. The research department and writers then discussed if the topic and approach to the topic was appropriate for preschoolers, and if they accepted it, the content of the episode was further developed. They would often bring in outside consultants who were experts in the subject matter and the processes in teaching it to preschoolers. Wilder considered the researchers experts in how the concepts they wanted to present would translate to the medium of television rather than in a classroom or museum, but they considered preschoolers, who evaluated each script from their perspective, to be their " true experts". [93] The writer took the information they gathered from the research department, preschoolers, and experts and wrote a treatment, or detailed outline of the script, which included goals for the entire episode and for each game. [94] The writers, Wilder, and the research team had a treatment meeting, which Dhingra and her colleagues described as "an organized creative brainstorm", [95] which was rooted in the philosophy and mission of the show, the art of good storytelling, and the point of view of their viewers. The goal of the treatment meeting was to give the writers everything they needed to create a workable second draft of the episode script, and to ensure that it fit the needs of their viewers. [93]a b Santomero, Angela (21 February 2018). "I Admired Mr. Rogers As a Mentor from Afar – Now I'm Walking in His Sneakers". USA Today . Retrieved 4 August 2021. Weisman, Jon (2 August 2006). "Interactive innovator draws raves". Variety . Retrieved 28 July 2021. a b Norris, Chris (9 February 2004). "Me and You and a Dog Named Blue". Spin . Retrieved 15 June 2021.