TVs make drones.

[novapsyche]

TV Interferes With Infants' Language Development

Television reduces verbal interaction between parents and infants, which could delay children's language development, says a U.S. study that challenges claims that certain infant-targeted DVDs actually benefit youngsters.

The researchers studied 329 children, aged 2 months to 48 months, and found that for each additional hour of television exposure, there was a decrease of 770 words (7 percent) heard from an adult by the children. The study also found that the more hours spent watching television, the fewer vocalizations infants made when adults talked to them.

The social scientist in me shakes her head at this comment: I will argue that this study is erroneous. I have 20 grandchildren all of which have watched children's TV shows and Disney/cartoon dvd's as a routine part of their day. There is not a one of them that has ANY speech problems. I think our family is large enough to be able to have a good sampling of development of children.

Comments

[aiela.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Way for the commentator to miss the point. Imagine how much -better- those kids could have been.

My niece puts her 8 month old in a bouncy chair in front of the tv so she can cook/whatever, instead of putting her in the bouncy chair in the KITCHEN WITH HER, and talking to her. I don't get it.

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

Some of us just can't think of anything to say. I'm sure Adrian's early language development was slower than it could have been because neither of us was really very good at babbling about whatever happened to be going on. Honestly, he probably did learn the beginnings of how to talk as much from Winnie the Pooh as he did from us.

[aiela.livejournal.com]

I guess in that case it would be trickier. I dunno, I never thought twice about it. I'd talk about what I was making, or what we were going to be eating, or at times I'd just read aloud whatever I was reading, even if it was an adult book. Or make up fake conversations with her and when she'd babble back I'd act like I was responding to what she said, so she could get the concept of conversation.

I pretty much talked to her constantly. Walking through the grocery store, sitting at home. She didn't talk much until she was three, even then, but once she did it was in complete sentences. Her vocab has always been high. Just the other day she said "Why do you use words I don't know?" and I said "I've always used words you didn't know, and eventually you got old enough to ask about them."

I dunno. I certainly didn't do everything -right- when she was little, since i was young and self-centered, but I don't think I ever used the tv as a babysitter until she was well into preschool age. And that was so I could take a shower or maybe get another hour's sleep.

[demeter42.livejournal.com]

Those infant shows are particularly insidious, because they have little or no speaking in them. I wish I could find the study I read a couple of years ago. They showed infant videos to the experimental group, and used SpongeBob videos for the control group. They also had a group that was not exposed to television at all. What was interesting is that the Spongebob exposed group had slightly better language development than either other group - they theorized because they were exposed to so much language in Spongebob. The infant video exposed group did significantly worse than either other group. If I find that study I'll post a link here... it was really interesting stuff.

[vaxjedi]

Mirriam had significant speech delays due to her autism. Interestingly enough, it was children's TV that helped her significantly with them. The first words she could say clearly were those she heard repeated on the TV from watching Blue's Clues ad infinidum.

It might be interesting to have the affect studied on children that are not neurotypical.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I agree. You bring up a good point.