Made-for-baby videos may harm language development: study

Many parents think they're helping their baby's language by letting them watch aBaby Einstein DVD, butthe opposite might be the case, according to a study out Tuesday.

The study found that with every hour per day spent viewing baby DVDs and videos, infants between the agesof eightand 16 monthslearned about10 per centfewernew vocabulary words compared to babies who never watched the targeted programming.

As well, the study showed that babies in the same age rangewho watched other types of programming such as children's educational shows, children's non-educational shows, kids movies or adult television learned more words, versus babies watching infant-geared shows.

For toddlers aged 17 to 24 months, the article found that baby DVDs and videos had neither a positive nor anegative effect.

The paper was published online Wednesday in the Journal of Pediatrics. It wasdone by researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute whoquizzed 1,008 Minnesota and Washington parents abouttheir babies' viewing habits. Theyalso completed a standard evaluationfor measuring infant language development.

"Despite marketing claims, 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," said a statement about the study.

'Babies learn their language best from a person, not a TV or a video.' Study co-author Andrew Meltzoff

One of the study's co-authors, Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences,told CBC News that, "The study shows that parents are the babys best teacher and that babies like people, people, people. Babies learn their language best from a person, not a TV or a video. They learn language and the ways of the culture from watching us. We are role models for our children.

"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," said Meltzoff in a release.

One of thestudy's other authors, Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrics researcher at Seattle Childrens Hospital Research Institute and a University of Washington pediatrics professor, said, "In my clinical practice, I am frequently asked by parents what the value of these products is. 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," he added.

The paper is part of a bigger project examining media content in the first two years of life, and the effects of content on young children. Last spring, the researchers found that bythree months of age, 40 per cent of babies are regular TV watchers, with that number jumping to 90 per cent by two years of age.