Baby DVDs, which are designed to educate and engage, are actually associated with poorer vocabulary development in children aged under two. That’s according to an observational study by Frederick Zimmerman and colleagues who say it is now important that a large-scale randomised controlled trial of the effects of baby DVDs is conducted.
The researchers interviewed 1008 parents of children aged between 2 and 24 months over the phone about how much time their children spent watching children’s TV and baby DVDs such as Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby.
The children’s language development was gauged
by the parents using a brief vocabulary checklist.
Among the children aged from 8 to 16 months, each extra hour of baby DVD viewing was associated with understanding approximately six to eight fewer words. This association held even after taking into account how often the parents interacted with their children. By contrast, a child’s time spent watching children’s TV was not associated with poorer vocabulary. The researchers said that this was perhaps because children’s educational shows such as Sesame Street, the largest category of viewing at this age, are evidence-based, whereas ‘…baby DVDs/videos are designed with only an approximate sense of developmental needs, based
on no formal research.’
The finding for DVDs, if not for children’s TV, provides some support for the American Academy of Paediatrics recommendation of no screen time for children under two. However, writing in the Journal of Paediatrics (tinyurl.com/2pno9b), the researchers cautioned that a causal relation between baby DVDs and lower vocabulary cannot be inferred from their observational design. For example, it is possible that parents who are concerned by their child’s vocabulary development turn to baby DVDs for help.
Responding to the findings, Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith of Birkbeck College, University of London, pointed out that some DVDs are in fact informed by scientific research on babies. ‘The Baby Bright programme, on which I?acted as a consultant, differs from others. Rather than be mesmerised by the centre of the screen where most action takes place in children’s media, babies watching our programming are encouraged to actively track moving objects, to anticipate where they will appear next and to rectify the planning of their saccadic eye movements, to reinstate whole objects mentally from the presentation of partial objects in unusual orientations.’
Karmiloff-Smith warned other psychologists considering working with commercial companies that many compromises are made and that ultimately the final product design rests with the commercial company. ‘Nonetheless,’ she said, ‘I would encourage psychologists to become involved in the commercialisation of child development, which otherwise will continue to be produced without any scientific content at all.’ CJ
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The Psychologist
