July 4, 2007
Toddlers learn little from TV
According to research published in June by Wake Forest University professor Marina Krcmar and researchers at the University of Connecticut, children between 15 and 24 months are more likely to learn vocabulary from a live person, or even a simple video of an adult repeating new words, than they are from voice-overs on Teletubbies. [via Winston Salem Journal]
"In recent years, more television shows and DVDs for the toddler and younger set - Baby Einstein, Baby Mozart and even an entire channel devoted to the teething demographic, BabyFirstTV - have cropped up in stores and online, all marketed to parents eager to unlock their children’s inner precociousness.
While there has been research to back up some of the educational claims of shows for older children, such as Sesame Street, there hasn’t been much research done on shows geared to younger children, Krcmar said. “All those claims really aren’t substantial.”
... Krcmar is hesitant to say that toddlers absolutely can’t learn from watching television. But there’s no doubt that they learn from adults, and likely better.
Krcmar’s research was published June 21 in the academic Journal of Media Psychology.
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