Repetition is a way of learning. The kind of repetition in which each instance builds upon the previous is called iteration. It implies a certain newness to each repeat, with all of them working toward some end goal. This is how children learn. Children don’t necessarily enjoy doing the same thing over and over any more than we do, but they can enjoy it each time because for them it’s new each time; they have a lot more to learn from it than we do and they get a new part of it each time they receive the whole of it. In The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell talks about the usage of what would later be called The James Earl Jones Effect in a Sesame Street segment: "Not long afterward (and quite by accident), the Sesame Street writers figured out why kids like repetition so much. The segment in question this time featured the actor James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet. As originally taped, Jones took long pauses between the letters, because the idea was to insert other elements between the letters. But Jones, as you can imagine, cut such a compelling figure that the Sesame Street producers left the film as it was and played it over and over again for years: the letter A or B etc., would appear on the screen, then there would be a long pause, and then James would boom out the name and the letter would disappear. 'What we noticed was that the first time through, kids would shout out the name of the letter after James did,' Sam Gibbon says, 'After a couple of repetitions, they would respond to the appearance of the letter before he did, in the long pause. Then with enough repetitions, they would anticipate the letter before it appeared. They were sequencing themselves through the piece; first they learned the name of the letter, then they learned to associate the name of the letter with its appearance, then they learned the sequence of the letters." And he follows shortly after with: "An adult considers constant repetition boring, because it requires reliving the same experience over and again. But to preschoolers repetition isn't boring, because each time they watch something they are experiencing it in a completely different way." Following called The James Earl Jones Effect, the children’s television show Blues Clues would repeat the same episode five times in a row, bringin the kids along in a way that for them it was taken in as five distinctly different episodes.
