James "Alex" Bonus
· Associate ProfessorVerifiedOhio State University · Communication
Active 2015–2026
About
James "Alex" Bonus is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on childhood media experiences, specifically examining the cognitive obstacles that impede young children's learning from socioemotional and science-themed media. His work investigates issues such as developing story schema and inaccurate reality judgments in children. Additionally, Bonus studies the effects of exposure to nostalgic media on adults, exploring how such content triggers temporal comparisons between the past and present self and the implications of these comparisons for psychological well-being. His academic background includes a PhD and MA in Communication Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a BA in Sociology and Journalism from Flagler College.
Research topics
- Psychology
- Social psychology
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Epistemology
- Art
- Aesthetics
- Visual arts
- History
- Literature
- Philosophy
- Gender studies
- Theology
- Mathematics
- Developmental psychology
Selected publications
The Role of Different Types of Anthropomorphism in Children’s Biology Learning from Stories
Journal of Cognition and Development · 2026-03-19
articleSenior authorJournal of Communication · 2025-07-22 · 3 citations
articleAbstract A new era of message processing research will emerge from the convergence of powerful machine learning algorithms with dynamic data from everyday devices equipped with biological sensors. Our study takes critical steps into this era by integrating theory-guided artificial neural networks with eye movements to understand how people learn science concepts from dynamic multimedia. Essential to our theory-guided machine learning approach is a cognitive conceptualization of time as the dynamic interdependence between past and new information that guides how multimedia is attended to and understood. We tracked the eye movements of 197 children as they watched an educational video. We trained two neural network architectures differing in theory guidance to predict learning outcomes using eye movements. The theory-guided architecture, which considered the temporal interdependence of information, yielded more accurate out-of-sample predictions. Our work advances the use of theory-guided machine learning and the development of systems that monitor real-time learning.
Focus on Facts, Not Fiction: Integrating Educational Television with Hands-on Learning
Open Science Framework · 2025-01-01
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingDevelopmental Psychology · 2025-01-13 · 2 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingoccurred when children revealed their lack of knowledge. Watching science television before (vs. after) the engineering activity promoted knowledge elaboration sequences but had no impact on knowledge gap sequences. These patterns did not vary according to children's age. Collectively, our results offer empirical support for the notion that parents' open-ended questions elicit two types of responses from children during collaborative science activities. Furthermore, our results suggest that science television might serve as a conversational support during those activities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
Acoustics of Child Media for Pre-schoolers
Open Science Framework · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations
otherOpen accessThis study aims to investigate how the prosody of child-directed speech varies with the depth of educational content and across different genres of children’s media using a YouTube video corpus. The objective of this study is to understand whether the prosody of child-directed’ speech in videos targeted for children 3-5 vary in accordance with genre, the age of the viewing child, the researcher-rated age of the target audience, and the depth of educational content.
The Child-directness of Child Media
Open Science Framework · 2025-01-01
otherOpen accessThis study aims to investigate how the prosody of child-directed speech varies with the depth of educational content and across different genres of children’s media using a YouTube video corpus. The objective of this study is to understand whether child-directedness ratings from naïve adults align with genres, target audience, viewing audience, and the depth of educational content of videos.
Media Psychology · 2024-08-30 · 1 citations
articleSenior authorJournal of Children and Media · 2024-11-11 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingYou Do You[Tube]!The multifaceted roles of online video viewing in the lives of U.S. children
Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2024-10-11 · 4 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingJournal of Applied Developmental Psychology · 2023-11-01 · 3 citations
article1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 10 shared
Marie‐Louise Mares
- 8 shared
Judy Watts
University of Kansas
- 4 shared
Tim Wulf
- 4 shared
Anne Bartsch
Leipzig University
- 4 shared
Nicholas L. Matthews
The Ohio State University
- 4 shared
Alanna Peebles
San Diego State University
- 3 shared
Rebecca A. Dore
- 3 shared
Julia M. Wilson
The Ohio State University
Education
- 2017
Ph.D., Communication Arts
University of Wisconsin-Madison
- 2014
Master of Arts, Communication Arts
University of Wisconsin–Madison
- 2012
Bachelor of Arts, Sociology
Flagler College
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