The document discusses research on how infants and young children develop language abilities and how media consumption affects language development. It finds that: 1) Infants have the ability to hear and see from a young age, with vision similar to adults by 6 months and hearing by age 7. 2) Children learn language best through live, positive interaction with caregivers rather than videos alone. 3) Educational TV like Sesame Street can help children learn words, but live interaction is still most effective for language development. 4) The type of media content matters - educational programs support language skills better than adult-oriented content.

1. Media
Language, Media, and Infants
Aaron Collins

2. Eyes and Ears
• A reminder of when we begin to develop our sense of eyesight and hearing.
Of course each child is unique, so the times given are just to have a general
idea of the time period.
• Vision-Born with the ability, and by 6 months
old, developed as well as an adult’s.
Occipital lobe
• Hearing-ability to hear before birth, but not as
acutely as adults. By age 7 children can hear as
well as adults.
Temporal lobe
Guernsey, Lisa. Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five. New York: Basic Books, 2007.

3. Language
More Review
• A lot of different areas of the brain are used to understand and form
language. The left hemisphere plays the biggest role in a majority of
people.
• By 3 months old, babies have the ability to distinguish spoken sounds
• Around 10 years old, children lose the ability to relearn sounds that the
brain has gotten rid of
Moon, Christine. “Sensory Power Point”. Online Power Point. angel.spscc.edu. June 2012.

4. Television and the Zombie Effect
• “The Zombie Effect”- Jane M. Healy posited that “when children are faced with content that is difficult or
confusing, they may be ‘physiologically compelled to space out’”(Guernsey, p. 27)
• Another similar opinion comes from Marie Winn. Saying that while children are watching television there
is very little intellectual activity going on in their brains.
Guernsey, Lisa. Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five. New York: Basic Books, 2007.

5. Refuting the “Zombie Effect”
• Most research shows that exactly the opposite is happening while children are watching television, that
they are engaged in what they are watching. And that “children do look away from television, as much as
150 times per hour”(Guernsey, p.34) The content of what they are watching does play a role.
• One study was done where 2, 3 ½, and 5 year olds were shown altered versions of Sesame Street along
with the original. One version being broken up random segments of the show, another in Greek, and
another in which all speech was heard backwards. “The theory was that, if children paid more attention
to the regular programing, it was near certainty that they were watching because they found some
meaning in what they saw”(Guernsey. P34). And the outcome was that children preferred the original.
While the altered versions were being viewed, they complained that the TV was broken and looked away
more.
Guernsey, Lisa. Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five. New York: Basic Books, 2007.

6. Video learning
• Video Deficit- Under the same learning conditions, it has been shown that children will learn more from a live speaker
opposed to a video
One story, from the book Into the Minds of Babes, tells of a boy whose parents were both deaf. The parents did not have any
friends that could hear or family near to where they lived. The mother was told by doctors not to use sign language with her
child, and he did not have any hearing friends. The only language that the boy was exposed to came from children’s shows on
television. Around the age of 4, in 1971, the boy ended up in the speech clinic at the University of Connecticut. At the clinic they
found his understanding and expression of language to be far below what it should have been. The following are some example
of his speech:
“Look at all the plane.”, “Can open that plane?”, “Where the wheels plane? Take it off.”, “This not take off plane. This is how a
plane.”
One of the things he was missing from just watching television to learn to speak was the live interaction and how things
relate to one another and himself. Another thing he wasn’t learning was grammar. From an article in Infant and Child
Development Alan L. Mendelsohn et al. writes that “Extensive literature has documented strong positive impacts of parent–child
verbal interactions on early child language development, self-regulation, school readiness and later achievement”.
• Language, speech, and television-Research was done in 2000 at the University of Connecticut on 3-4 year olds,
including the quantity of television watched. “They found that no correlation to any skill related to language development,
save one: the children who watched the most television performed worse in tests of grammar than the other children in the
sample”(Guernsey, p. 148).
-Guernsey, Lisa. Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five. New York: Basic Books, 2007.
-Mendelsohn, Alan L.Brockmeyer, Carolyn A.Dreyer, Benard P.Fierman, Arthur H.Berkule-Silberman, Samantha B.Tomopoulos, Suzy. "Do Verbal Interactions With Infants During Electronic Media
Exposure Mitigate Adverse Impacts On Their Language Development As Toddlers?." Infant & Child Development 19.6 (2010): 577-593. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 18 Aug.
2012.

7. Video learning cont.
• Fast Mapping- “learning and using new words after only limited exposure to those
words”(Allen, p. 650).
• Most infants and children have been found to be able to learn new words from a live
speaker. However, as Allen and Scofield quote “Krcmar et al. found that only the older
toddlers(22-24 months) were able to learn words in the video conditions(i.e. the adult-
on-television and the Teletubbies conditions)….when learning words from a live
speaker, children quickly begin using those words to help figure out the meanings of the
other words”(Allen, p. 650)
Allen, Rebekah Scofield, Jason. "Word Learning From Videos: More Evidence From 2-Year-Olds." Infant & Child Development 19.6 (2010): 649-661. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 17 Aug. 2012.

8. Content
• Educational content vs. Adult programming- A lab study was done by Mendelsohn et al. on 6 month old
infants coming from low-income families. They were exposed to more adult oriented programming
instead of infant-directed learning content. They found that there could be an association made between
the amount of time an infant is exposed to adult oriented programming and a lesser ability to learn
language at around 14 months of age.
• The best- It seems that Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, Blue’s Clues, Arthur, and Clifford and others that
are similar are the best for children to learn new words.
Guernsey, Lisa. Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five. New York: Basic Books, 2007.
Mendelsohn, Alan L.Brockmeyer, Carolyn A.Dreyer, Benard P.Fierman, Arthur H.Berkule-Silberman, Samantha B.Tomopoulos, Suzy. "Do Verbal Interactions With Infants During
Electronic Media Exposure Mitigate Adverse Impacts On Their Language Development As Toddlers?." Infant & Child Development 19.6 (2010): 577-593. Psychology and
Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 18 Aug. 2012.

9. Comprehension Test and mixed up Teletubbies
• Attentional Inertia- “the major mechanism by which a young child will
continue to pay attention to the program even when the content is
difficult for that child to understand”(Guernsey, p. 35-36).
• It has been found that when children and infants are engaged in viewing a
program that their heart rate slows and are less distractible.
• In one experiment, the show Teletubbies was used in the original uncut
version and in cut-up segments that did not make any sense. The videos
were shown to a variety of age groups, from 6 month old to 24 month old
children, to see if they would show a preference between the different
versions. And they found that it depended on the age of the children. The
24 month olds preferred the uncut original version and so did 18 month
old children. But in the 6-12 month old age range they found that the
children were not showing any preference between the two versions.
Guernsey, Lisa. Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five. New York: Basic Books, 2007.

10. Conclusion
• There are a variety of studies on infants and learning language from video, and with contradictory
conclusions. Some finding that children cannot learn anything from watching television and others the
opposite. The majority seem to say that children can learn words from video, but not usually until they
are around two years of age. And it seems that co-viewing with a parent or caregiver to interact with
while viewing can help also. Most researchers agree on one thing. That the best way for children to learn
is with live, positive, nurturing interaction with their parents , family, and caregivers.

11. Works Cited
Allen, Rebekah Scofield, Jason. "Word Learning From Videos: More Evidence From 2-Year-Olds." Infant & Child Development 19.6
(2010): 649-661. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 17 Aug. 2012.
Barr, Rachel Linebarger, Deborah L. "Special Issue On The Content And Context Of Early Media Exposure." Infant & Child
Development 19.6 (2010): 553-556. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 17 Aug. 2012
Guernsey, Lisa. Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five. New York: Basic Books, 2007.
Mendelsohn, Alan L. Brockmeyer, Carolyn A. Dreyer, Benard P.Fierman, Arthur H.Berkule-Silberman, Samantha B.Tomopoulos, Suzy.
"Do Verbal Interactions With Infants During Electronic Media Exposure Mitigate Adverse Impacts On Their Language
Development As Toddlers?." Infant & Child Development 19.6 (2010): 577-593. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection.
Web. 18 Aug. 2012
Moon, Christine. “Sensory Power Point”. Online Power Point. angel.spscc.edu. June 2012.