The researchers found no positive or negative effects on infants of either age group from viewing educational and non-educational media or adult television programs.
The results surprised us, but they make sense. There are only a fixed number of hours that young babies are awake and alert. If the alert time is spent in front of DVDs and TV instead of with people speaking in parentese that melodic speech we use with little ones the babies are not getting the same linguistic experience, said Meltzoff, who is the Job and Gertrud Tamaki endowed chair in psychology at the UW.
Parents and caretakers are the babys first and best teachers. They instinctively adjust their speech, eye gaze and social signals to support language acquisition. Watching attention-getting DVDs and TV may not be an even swap for warm social human interaction at this very young age. Old kids may be different, but the youngest babies seem to learn language best from people, Meltzoff said.
In my clinical practice, I am frequently asked by parents what the value of these products is, said Christakis. The evidence is mounting that they are of no value and may in fact be harmful. Given what we now know, I believe the onus is on the manufacturers to prove their claims that watching these programs can positively impact childrens cognitive development.
As part of the telephone interviews, which took about 45 minutes to complete, a standard inventory for measuring infant language development was used.
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Contact: Joel Schwarz
joels@u.washington.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington
8-Aug-2007