Baby Einstein Videos Lead to Poor Language Skills

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Researchers determine not only do Baby Einstein videos NOT help kids, they actually can hinder language development.

[pippadaisy[$]]

Ha! Good! I am VINDICATED!

[hadassahchana[$]]

What she said. I hate things like that. Along with baby flash cards - it's all preventing children from learning the way they're supposed to learn.

[wivabef]

Pish Posh.

There are two key phrases missed out in this hyperbole:

"over use" of the material and ... random telephone interviews.

For both papers, the researchers conducted random telephone interviews with more than 1,000 families in Minnesota and Washington with a child born in the previous two years.

Now that's a scientific study!

Anyhow... my sister who used Baby Einstein to occupy her very, very busy son so she could gather her thoughts for a half hour... has a son who speaks Portugese, English and Spanish.

I, myself, can't stand the stupid DVDs, but these wholesale condemnations of a product by people who often don't even have kids drive my up the wazoo.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

As part of the telephone interviews, which took about 45 minutes to complete, a standard inventory for measuring infant language development was used.

Phone interviews are actually a method acceptable for validity, especially if using an already-accepted tool like the inventory mentioned. Random calling is also an accepted sampling method, as you can create a representative sample by weeding families out by demographics, etc., at the onset of the interview.


mj
who may not have kids and may like to write pithy thread titles, but does know research

[frazzledspice]

ALL TV encourages passive learning.

Children are meant to be interactive, active learners, particularly in the preschool years.

And although listening to TV exposes kids to language, it isn't the same as having to practice those interactive language skills with other people.

TV is overrated.

[jenninca]

And people wondered why I never bought any of those....

[wivabef]

Yes, TV is overrated. And so were the Baby Einstein videos. But, I think the headline does a disservice to the research by proclaiming only the most extreme results, and by relying on hearsay to report it. I say hearsay because the toddlers and children aren't the ones being interviewed, but rather the parents, who, being one, are never quite honest when describing their child's abilities.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

True. In interviews, they're more likely to *overstate* their children's abilities, especially around a skill they've invested time and money into building. Ergo margins of errors and such. Actually, when it comes to child abilities, depending on the age group being studied, parent interviews can be more highly reliable than direct child observations, since children can be thrown off (even in their own homes) by the presence of the testers.

[wivabef]

That's true, MJ. I know when my pediatrician wanted to understnad my toddler child's symptons, she relied on my "interpretation" of them.

[mtomm[$]]

Testers.

My daughter was put in the lowest reading class after kindergarten. Her 1st grade teacher was astounded at her progress and couldn't believe what a good reader was after the first quarter. In fact, she said she had never seen such accomplishment and she was one of the best readers she had EVER had in a first grade class, blah, blah, blah.

Why had she tested so low? She wasn't going to read to that strange man in the hallway even if he was the principal. She always had the great reading skills but that shyness is her to a T and the principal didn't know that.

[Prepoia[$]]

Which is why standardized test stink too. No one knows your child better than the person (teacher) that is working with them and others all day long. I had a non-English speaking student that was forced to take a LA standardized test and by guessing scored higher than one of my really bright LA students. But...of course we should all be assessed by these inane standardized tests.

[pippadaisy[$]]

Disney is not. pleased.

UW turns down Disney request to retract baby brain news release

[Helen_B[$]]

Maybe Disney would like to produce educational DVDs for moms instead of babies. In one study I read about, mothers and their toddlers were observed. The number of words the mothers used was counted, and the vocabulary of the toddlers was recorded in order to see if there was any relationship between how much the mothers talked and how big the toddlers' vocabularies were. The quieter group of moms had kids with vocabularies less than half as big as the kids of the chattier moms. There was not the same correlation for dads. I guess that means that moms should improve THEIR vocabularies, and talk a lot. I wish I had the reference for this, because I thought the results were fascinating.

[pippadaisy[$]]

LOL. Well, I never shut up. Which might explain why Beanie can use and define non sequitur correctly.