Toddlers Can’t Learn Words from TV

American toddlers watch TV two hours a day at average. Many TV programs are advertised as educational. Yet, the children under 3 years of age learn less from these programs than it might seem, unless there is an adult present to reinforce the learning. Researchers from the University of Delaware and the Temple University studied children aged from 40 to 42 months to find out whether they could learn verbs from watching TV programs.

Children tend to memorize the names of objects better than the verbs. But verbs are crucial for language skills development since they are the centerpiece of sentences and connect words to each other. The researchers played children a video where characters performed actions accompanied with word descriptions, for example, “Look, she is dancing”. In some situations, children watched the videos by themselves, while in others they watched with an adult who performed the action that later would appear on the screen. The researchers then measured the children’s ability to memorize a new word and use it in an appropriate context.

Without adult support, the children under 3 years of age could not learn words from programs or understand them when they heard them in contexts outside the video. But when the children watched the program with an adult present to help them memorize new words, they could add them into their active vocabulary. Children over 3 years of age could learn words from the videos and understand them in other context by themselves, even without adult support.

Hirsh-Pasek says that the study’s message for the parents is that in spite of the excess of programs aimed at children under three years of age, the study warns against the inefficiency of these programs for language skills development in toddlers.

Source of the image: sxc.hu/profile/Annalog85.