Associations Between Media Viewing and Language Development in Children Under Age Two Years of Age

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Development in Children Under Age 2 Years (Zimmerman et al., 2007) Nearly every theory of language development recognizes that there is a critical period for learning language. During this critical period a child must receive environmental input for normal development. Parents and caregivers are an extremely important piece of this environmental input and the best way for caregivers to teach their children language is to simply talk to them—a lot. We know that children often say their first word between the ages of 11 and 14 months, and there continues to be a lot of variability in language development; is this a result of nature or nurture? Zimmerman, Christakis, and Meltzoff (2007) studied the effects of media viewing on language development in children under 2 to see if this, as a part of nurture, has a negative consequence on language. A random sample of 1008 parents and their children was included in this study about the effect of media exposure on infants’ and toddlers’ language development. The types of media were categorized into 4 groups: children’s educational, children’s noneducational, baby DVDs/videos, and grownup TV. The study controlled for race/ethnicity, time spent in daycare, household income, parental education, and most importantly parental interaction with their children in the areas of reading, storytelling, and music. This study measured infants’ and toddlers’ language development using the short-form Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). The CDI is a reliable and valid means of measuring linguistic and communicative development. The study found that reading and telling stories at least once per day each was correlated with an increase in CDI score for both 8- to 16-month olds and 17- to 24- mont... ... middle of paper ... ...control. All the suggestions of areas where parental interaction may have an uncontrolled effect in this study suggests that parental interaction is absolutely crucial to language development. This study shows a significant negative correlation in the language development of infants who watch and hour or more of baby DVDs/videos per day. Although it is a correlational study, the results suggest that infant’s caregivers should think twice before plopping their child in front of a baby DVD to help him or her learn language, and should instead spend that time simply talking to their child. Works Cited Hoff, Erika. (2009). Language development (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Zimmerman, F.J., Christakis, D.A., & Meltzoff, A.N. (2007). Associations between media viewing and language development in children under age 2 years. Journal of Pediatrics,151, 364-368.

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