The Influence Of Indian Animation On Cultural Education And Its Effect On Children’s Cognitive Behavior

The basic principles of animation in India can be traced back to the primitive human era.From those times,attempts to capture the motion drawing or movement can be found in various cave paintings.Warli Tribal Art,believed to be one of the oldest forms of art depicts characters in motion.Movement is shown through different cycles to portray the motions of walking,dancing and many other actions.Similarly,before the birth of animated movies,shadow-puppet traditions were used to tell stories.Now-adays with the rapid evolution of technology animation is world-wide and available to all.Through this accessibility to animation,knowledge can be shared andtransmitted in acreative way to numerous audiences;specifically,the Indian Diaspora of Mauritius.Through the ancestral background of Mauritius,Indo-Mauritians are closely related to India and its culture.The effort to maintain the ancestral identity becomes necessary.Learning occurs from a very young age as J.Piaget(Swiss Psychologist)explained through his various stages.The everyday environment plays a major role in the cognitive construction of an infant to an adult.Given that animation is highly present in children’s life it becomes a crucial part of what built their perceptions.Hindu Mythologically themed animation are always presented with plots of moral,such as in current broadcasted animated movies;“Bal Ganesh”,“Chhota Bheem” and so on.Animations with morals are linked to B.F.Skinner’s(American Psychologist)theory.Through the method of operant conditioning one can differentiate between right and wrong.And in animated movies protagonists and antagonists are models of operant learning.In turn children will observe,learn and imitate through what they watch.This process of observational learning is termed as vicarious learning,coined by A.Bandura(AmericanCanadian Psychologist)who theorized that learning happens through the process of observation.This article is mainly based on the research of the underlying significance of Indian mythological themed animation on child development.It is an analysis of how it had,and still has an important role in the cognitive construction of a child in building appurtenance to the Indian Diaspora.Research and application of various theories from J.Piaget,B.F.Skinner and A.Bandura are mainly applied to understand animation and its learning efficiency towards Indo-Mauritian children.