Study: educational videos don’t help babies learn vocabulary

March 2, 2010 by Shawn Douglas
Filed under: Baby Health, News

A recent study has added to the evidence that educational videos aren’t helpful for babies trying to acquire new vocabulary.

Many companies creating media directed at infants have claimed that infants can learn vocabulary through the media. Those claims have largely been unsubstantiated until recently.

A new study out of the University of California-Riverside that infants likely don’t learn new vocabulary by watching educational DVDs and in fact may be hindered by such activity.

The research team examined 96 toddlers between the ages of 12 months and 25 months, giving a Baby Wordsworth DVD (part of Disney’s Baby Einstein collection) to the parents of half the babies while the other half received no special educational material. The parents who received the 35-minute video were told to have their babies watch it in the attempt to learn 30 English words highlighted by the video.

The study lasted six weeks, and all babies were brought to the laboratory every two weeks. They were all tested on their vocabulary, specifically focusing on the vocabulary of the video.

The researchers found no evidence that the DVD had helped the babies learn the vocabulary.

“Apart from the gains in word knowledge we would expect from developing children, there was no evidence that children learned words specifically highlighted in a DVD focused on teaching children those words,” wrote the study authors.

Though the researchers didn’t find any significant difference in cognitive ability scores between the two groups, they did notice something curious. They found that the lower the age of the child that first watched the DVD, the lower the language-related test score.

Time journalist Alice Park speculates that overstimulation of the brain by the video may be one possible culprit. Past research suggests that young children are better off learning from a live speaker who both engages with them and repeats vocabulary, especially while look at the specific object.

Park also suggests that the simple act of replacing parental interaction time with a DVD decreases the opportunities for the young child to learn.

“Given that infant-directed media have become nearly ubiquitous aspects of many infants’ lives, future research should continue to examine whether and how parents can use these DVDs effectively to teach their young children,” said lead author Dr. Rebekah Richert.

However, Richert noted that completely removing the media may not be completely realistic. She told Time, “[Parents] can use them to sometimes teach children, but they should be aware that without being involved themselves, children aren’t likely to learn.”

The study appears online in the March issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.