Baby DVDs may slow early language acquisition

Last Updated: 2007-11-07 16:52:03 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - There appears to be no benefit whatsoever from having infants watch baby DVDs or videos, despite marketing claims to the contrary. In a study of infants age 8 to 16 months, researchers found that watching baby DVDs or videos may actually delay vocabulary development.

"The take-home message for parents," said Dr. Frederick J. Zimmerman, "is that you can't purchase healthy development -- it comes from frequent conversations between parent and child starting at birth and continuing at least for the first 3 years of life."

Zimmerman, from the Child Health Institute, Seattle, and associates interviewed 1,008 parents of children age 2 to 24 months about their children's language development and how their youngsters spent their time, including the types of media they are exposed to.

"We found that among the babies 8 to 16 months old, the more time they spent watching baby videos, the worse was their language development," Zimmerman told Reuters Health. Some examples of baby DVDs/videos include Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby.

Specifically, each hour per day of viewing baby DVDs/videos was associated with a 17-point decline in scores on an test that measures language development called the Communicative Development Inventory (DCI).

This corresponds to a difference of about 6 to 8 words for a typical child out of the 90 included on the CDI, the researchers explain in a report in the journal Pediatrics this month.

The researchers also found that parents who read or told stories to their infants and toddlers at least once a day increased their child's vocabulary scores on the CDI test.

No other form of media categories that the researchers measured was associated with either better or worse language development in infants 8 to 16 months old. These categories were educational TV or DVDs like Sesame Street, Blue's Clues; non-educational TV like Sponge Bob Squarepants and Bob the Builder; children's movies like Toy Story and The Little Mermaid, and adult TV like The Simpsons, Oprah, and sports programming.

The apparent harmful impact of baby DVDs/videos on language development was specific to infants 8 to 16 months old, the researchers emphasize.

Among toddlers 17 to 24 months old, there were no significant associations between any type of media and language development.

Baby videos are now a 100-million dollar business, "with a myriad of unsubstantiated claims being made about how they will improve intelligence and school readiness, writes Dr. Victor C. Strasburger in a commentary published with the study. Yet the current study, he points out, suggests "highly significant" language delays in babies exposed to these videos.

"Both pediatricians and parents need to appreciate the power of the media -- to educate, to entertain, and to harm," concludes Strasburger, professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque.

SOURCE: Journal of Pediatrics, October 2007.