Published: April 1, 1996

What Scares Children?

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After filming the spine-tingling shower scene in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho, actress Janet Leigh was so petrified she never again set foot in a shower. Although Leigh's fear may have been more intense than most, she was not alone. Many adults who witnessed the murder on the silver screen had at least one or two disturbing thoughts the next time they stepped into a shower.

As any parent can testify, children have similarly strong reactions to television shows and movies they watch. But adults are often baffled by the kinds of images and stories that strike fear in youngsters. "How a child will respond to a particular television show or movie is not always intuitively obvious,'' says Joanne Cantor, a communication-arts professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who over the past 15 years has studied the emotional effects of media...