With the growing popularity of DVD series focused on improving the development of babies, like Baby Einstein, the question about the effectiveness of these DVDs to actually help a child’s brain development has not been well studied. The theory behind the DVDs is that by plopping your kid down in front of the TV, they’ll learn cognitive skills — focused mostly on language — faster than other kids.
So researchers at the University of California at Riverside designed a randomized controlled study to find out. In the most rigorous study done in this area to-date, the researchers set out to determine the value of a DVD called “Baby Wordsworth” (a part of Disney’s Baby Einstein series), which is designed to teach toddlers new vocabulary words. The researchers assigned a group of 96 babies aged 12 to 24 months old to watch the DVD for six weeks, and compared their results with a control group of babies who did not watch the DVD.
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Don’t forget that in anticipation of a class action lawsuit, Disney is offering refunds for all Baby Einstein videos purchased since 2004 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/education/24baby.html). That’s probably a pretty good indication that they’re useless.
“…in past studies, infants who watch educational DVDs actually learned fewer words and scored lower on certain cognitive tests than babies who did not watch the DVDs.”
To be fair, this is less likely due to the direct impact of the DVDs themselves, rather the decrease face-to-face contact the infants have with their parents.
In most cases, increased infant television watching correleates negatively with parent interaction (at least anecdotally)
Its possible these videos do have a positive impact, but maybe only when combined with parent interaction along with the DVD viewing
pretty soon all baby educational videos will come with a “warning, may not actually teach your child anything” sticker
I watch Baby Einstein type videos with my son, but I sit with him and talk to him about what is going on. I am starting to rethink the whole thing though. I hope it isn’t too late.