Early TV Viewing No benefit in cognitive development.

Here is an article from ADVANCE. Even as a SLP I am often tempted to put my son infront of Bob the builder or Little Einstein,or Postman Pat so I can just go on with my work or do some household chores. Sadly,I have overcome my temptation fewer times. We tend to convince ourselves its educational. What I believe and end up practicing are worlds apart. And I know this holds true for many of you. Nevertheless, I hope to reduce my son's TV viewing time to 30 minutes a day. Start early or otherwise they whine and put up a fit when they want to watch something. This can begin from as early as 1.5 years.

Early TV Viewing
No benefit in cognitive development.


TV viewing before age 2 does not improve language and visual motor skills, according to a longitudinal study of infants, ages 0-3, at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. The findings reaffirm guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that recommend no television under the age of 2 and suggest that maternal, child and household characteristics are more influential in cognitive development [Pediatrics, 123 (3): e370-75].

"Contrary to marketing claims and some parents' perception that television viewing is beneficial to children's brain development, no evidence of such benefit was found," said lead author Marie Evans Schmidt, PhD, of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital.

The study analyzed data of 872 children from Project Viva, a prospective cohort study of mothers and children. Researchers visited mothers and their infants immediately after birth, at 6 months, and at 3 years of age. The mothers completed questionnaires regarding their child's TV viewing habits at ages 1 and 2.

The study is the first to investigate the long-term associations between infant TV viewing from birth to age 2 and both language and visual-motor skills at age 3. Researchers used the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III (PPVT III) and the Wide-Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities (WRAVMA) test. The former measures receptive vocabulary and is correlated with IQ, while the latter assesses for visual motor, visual spatial and fine motor skills.

The researchers controlled for sociodemographic and environmental factors known to contribute to an infants' cognitive development, including household income and the mother's age, education, marital status, parity and postpartum depression, as well as the child's gender, race, birth weight, body mass index and sleep habits. They used linear regression models to equalize the influences of these factors and calculated the independent effects of TV viewing on cognitive development. Once these influences were factored out, associations in the raw data between increased infant TV viewing and poorer cognitive outcomes disappeared.

"TV viewing in itself did not have measurable effects on cognition," noted Dr. Schmidt. "TV viewing is perhaps best viewed as a marker for a host of other environmental and familial influences, which may be detrimental to cognitive development."

While increased TV exposure was found to have no benefit to cognitive development in infants, it was not found to be a detriment either. The overall effects of increased TV viewing time were neutral. However, TV and video content was not measured, only the amount of time children were exposed to it.

While follow-up studies need to be done, the researchers warned parents and pediatricians that the body of research evidence suggests TV viewing for children under age 2 does more harm than good.

"TV exposure in infants has been associated with increased risk of obesity, attention problems and decreased sleep quality," stated pediatrician Michael Rich, MD, MPH, director of the Center on Media and Child Health and contributing author of the study and the current AAP Guidelines. "Parents need to understand that infants and toddlers do not learn or benefit in any way from viewing TV at an early age."