Developmental DVDs might do more harm than good

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By Steve Ragan Aug 9, 2007, 15:10 GMT

Moms and Dads are proud people. If you ask a parent about their child, they are likely to tell you that he or she is the smartest or the cutest child in existence. After they tell you this, then they will show you photographic proof. However, for parents who want to give their child an edge by using development DVD’s and TV programs, a new study suggests that it might do more harm than good.According to a new study by researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute, parents who want to give their infants a boost in learning language probably should limit the amount of time they expose their children to DVDs and videos such as Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby. Rather than helping babies, the over-use of such productions actually may slow down infants eight to sixteen months of age when it comes to acquiring vocabulary. Researchers conducted random telephone interviews with more than one thousand families in Minnesota and Washington. Television, DVD, and video viewing were divided into four categories: baby DVDs and videos; educational TV programs, DVDs and videos such as Sesame Street, Arthur and Blue's Clues. Children's non-educational television shows and movies such as Bob the Builder and Toy Story, and adult television such as Oprah, and sports programming. As part of the telephone interviews, which took about forty-five minutes to complete, a standard inventory for measuring infant language development was used. Parents of the eight to sixteen-month-olds were asked how many of a list of about ninety words their child understood. Typical words on this list included ‘choo choo,’ ‘mommy,’ and ‘nose.’ Parents of the seventeen to twenty-four-month-olds were asked how many words on a similar list they had heard their child use. Typical words from this list were ‘truck,’ ‘cookie,’ and ‘balloon.’ “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. The scientists found that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them. Baby DVDs and videos had no positive or negative effect on the vocabularies on toddlers seventeen to twenty-four months of age. The study was published on Tuesday in the Journal of Pediatrics. “The most important fact to come from this study is there is no clear evidence of a benefit coming from baby DVDs and videos and there is some suggestion of harm,” said Frederick Zimmerman, lead author of the study and a UW associate professor of health services. “The bottom line is the more a child watches baby DVDs and videos the bigger the effect. The amount of viewing does matter.”“We don't know for sure that baby DVDs and videos are harmful, but the best policy is safety first. Parents should limit their exposure as much as possible,” added Zimmerman. “Over the course of childhood, children spend more time watching TV than they do in school. So parents need to spend as much time monitoring TV and other media viewing as they do in monitoring their children's school activities.”The researchers believe more research is required, particularly to examine the long-term effects of baby DVDs and videos on children's cognitive development. Co-authors of the study are Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrics researcher at Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute and a UW professor of pediatrics, and Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the UW's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences.

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JonathanAug 9th, 2007 - 16:39:07

I was the first to comment!

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OMSAug 9th, 2007 - 19:16:59

This 'research” is an obscenely bias interpretation. It seems the goal is to prove that video elevision in any form is bad. This research only reinforces that interaction is the key to development, not the medium used. If a child is set in front of a video for hours without parental interaction, you will see the same results as you would if you set a child in front of a book with no parental interaction. It is not the medium; it is how the medium is used. Books, video, and audio are merely tools the value is in the meaningful interaction between parent, child and medium. The proper conclusion to this research would be that people are misusing or have misconceptions about the use of video media in childhood development. What needs research is finding where this bias to alternative ew forms of media is coming from.

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TAAug 10th, 2007 - 01:42:09

Should I throw away the Einstein DVDs then? I agree with previous commentator..This research is biased. They are asking the wrong question. As Nietzsche quoted, this exhausted 'modern science' of theirs is seeking into the extremes and missing the point. DVDs are sensual stimulus..the research only proves that non-human stimulus does not work well with infants. Maybe because the infant is not internally participating into the activity and could not. So okey, parent-talk alone works well...But what about parent-talk in front of the DVD?? Isn't this the proper stimulus that helps the infant internalize? These DVDs are only tools, and it needs to be properly used.

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JackAug 10th, 2007 - 05:35:47

I'll call bullshot on this one myself. The DVDs should (and mostly do) require parental involvement while watching or having a direct involvement immediately following the program with the infant. Infants and toddlers have no contextual idea about shows (and most developmental toys) without the parents guiding the contextual basis for the show or the toy through INTERACTION.

Of course, parents are the direct line of educational involvement and a healthy (or unhealthy) majority of parents think that an educational show, educational game or a school is the 'end-all' of learning. Spread the word that it's the parents that have the most prolific impact on their children's development and socialization.

What's bad about this headline is that it trivializes the product(s) that are making an attempt to encourage development instead of the 97% of schlock that retards developing children. Call that into focus to balance the headline (read: blurb) out.

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Semi-AgreeAug 10th, 2007 - 15:39:13

I will semi-agree with the above comments, with the exception that what SHOULD BE often IS NOT.

Allow me to elaborate: The DVD's by themselves have no positive impact (as 2 of the 3 comments stated), it is the parental interaction during/after that promotes the content of the videos to the child. I fully agree with that. But the sad reality is most (fully my opinion, no research basis to back up the 'most' other than common observation) parents don't interact with their children during/after the videos. The videos are often used as a replacement for parental interaction. They become the distraction.

ie:
StayAtHomeMom/Dad put the baby in front of the TV and put on the video while doing housework and other things they deem to be more important. DVD ends. Put on another one, then StayAtHomeMom/Dad does the dishes, washes the car, etc. These parents are thinking they can reduce their interaction with the child, but since it's an 'educational movie' instead of just cartoons, it makes it OK even without reinforcement of the material.

I would be interested in seeing the results of a study that compared:
Base: Mostly parental attention and stimulus, little TV at all.
Scenario 1: Cartoons/Typical children/infant shows & typical parental interaction
Scenario 2: Educational DVD's/shows & typical parental interaction
Scenario 3: Educational DVD's/shows & additional parental interaction reinforcing the content of the DVD's/shows.

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