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Newsletter for April 2010
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TV Causes Learning Lag in Infants
By
Jeanna Bryner,
Senior Writer
Even infants zone out in front of the television, and it turns
out this translates into less time interacting with parents and
possible lags in language development, a new study finds.
"We've known that television exposure during infancy is
associated with language delays and attentional problems, but so
far it has remained unclear why," said lead researcher Dimitri
Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior
and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute and
professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School
of Medicine.
In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics discourages
television watching
before the age of 2, a time when critical development, such as
language acquisition,
occurs. (Christakis said a baby's brain triples in size during
the first two years of life, so there's a lot going on in that
little noggin.)
To figure out the TV-language link, Christakis and his
colleagues rounded up 329 2-month to 4-year-old children and
their parents. The kids wore digital devices on random days each
month for up to two years that recorded everything they heard or
said for 12 to 16 hours. The researchers didn't determine
whether the adults and kids were actively watching the
television or if it was just on in the background.
Analyses of the recordings revealed that each hour of additional
television exposure
was linked with a decrease of 770 words (7 percent) the child
heard from an adult during the recording session. Hours of
television were also associated with a decrease in the number
and length of
child vocalizations
and the back and forth between the child and an adult (called a
conversational turn).
"Some of these reductions are likely due to children being left
alone in front of the television screen," the researchers write
in the June issue of the journal
Archives of Pediatrics
& Adolescent Medicine, "but others likely reflect
situations in which adults, though present, are distracted by
the screen and not interacting with their infant in a
discernible manner."
And interaction is key for baby's brain.
"The reason it's concerning is because we know that hearing
adults speak and being spoken to are critical exposures that
play a role in
infants development
in language," Christakis told
LiveScience.
With 30 percent of households having televisions on all the
time, the researchers wondered how many fewer opportunities
there were for children and parents to communicate and
socialize.
"My recommendation first is that children under the age of 2 be
discouraged from watching television," Christakis said. He added
that even if the TV show is intended for the adults, the effect
is the same for their children.
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