Television is becoming an increasingly prevalent habit of a child’s daily routine. Not only are children’s television consumption rates rising, the age at which they begin watching television is decreasing. The average child starts watching television at nine months, and 40% of children are watching television as early as three months. By two years old, 90% of children have begun watching television in some capacity. Children’s growing consumption of television and other media has led to an increasing research interest in how television impacts various aspects of a child’s life. For example, research has found that early television watching from ages one to three years old can have a detrimental effect on their attention at age seven.
In my research I wanted to extend these findings to focus the potential impact of TV watching on vocabulary skills in toddlers (as this represents a critical developmental period). Parents told us the television watching habits of their children in different genres (educational, cartoons, baby DVDs, adult entertainment). We also included other key variables linked to vocabulary acquisition: short-term memory and reading habits.
The findings indicated that television did not impact vocabulary scores, either positively or negatively. This pattern was true for educational programs, as well as baby DVDs. There are a couple of possibilities for why television viewing did not contribute to vocabulary skills.
• Displacement hypothesis --television viewing displaces time spent on more valuable learning-based activities, resulting in lowered academic performance.
• Lack of engagement or interaction that children have with adults. Although children may watch television with adults, adults are typically inattentive to child’s needs during this time, and they will have fewer meaningful linguistic interactions to build vocabulary skills.
• Reduced mental effort exerted as a result of television viewing. Television typically places minimal intellectual demands on the child, which can create a pattern of laziness and disinterest in more challenging intellectual pursuits.
However, reading educational books and short-term memory skills were important in supporting vocabulary learning. Only reading educational books contributed to vocabulary knowledge. While fictional and picture books may be enjoyable for your children, they may not have a strong learning component to them. Such books may serve a similar function to cartoons in that they are created primarily for light entertainment, rather than to communicate an educational message.
In summary, sweeping statements such as television watching is bad does a disservice to parents and educators who are seeking ways to support learning, as the findings suggest that the television watching did not negatively impact vocabulary scores in toddlers. However, while some educational programs have been seen to enhance reading performance in older children, they did not provide any linguistic advantage to the young children in the present study.
These findings can have an impact on the amount of media exposure parents allow for their young children, especially in light of the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines discouraging television viewing in the first two years of life. The present findings also indicate that various baby DVDs’ claims to teach babies and young children to read and talk earlier than the typically developing children appear to be unfounded.
However, reading educational books and developing short-term memory skills can be useful suggestions to enhance vocabulary knowledge in young children.
Reference: Early Childhood Education Journal (2013) ABSTRACT
Tracy Packiam Alloway, Phd is the co-author of THE WORKING MEMORY ADVANTAGE (2013)