More TV means less time for baby's language learning

Mon, Jun 1, 2009 (Reuters Health) -- Just spending time in listening range of a television set sharply reduces young children's verbal interaction with adults, new research shows.

"The effect of having a television on is that babies do speak less and they're spoken to less," Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis of the University of Washington in Seattle, the lead researcher on the study, told Reuters Health. The findings are cause for concern, he added, because these interactions are essential to language learning, as well as to a child's broader thinking, or "cognitive" development.

Christakis and his colleagues had previously shown that children younger than two who spent more time watching TV or videos were more likely to have language delays. The new findings, the researcher said, may help explain why.

In the current study, 329 children 2 to 24 months old wore pager-sized devices that recorded all audible sounds at the child's chest level. Parents were instructed to have the child wear the device from the time he or she woke up to the time the child went to bed at night for one day each month. The average number of recorded sessions per child was about eight. For the first three months, parents were told to turn off all sources of ambient noise, such as TV or radio, while for the last three months, they were told this wasn't necessary.

The researchers then used a software program developed by the LENA Foundation of Boulder, Colorado (which helped fund the study) to analyze the audio recordings.

The more hours of TV recorded in a session, the fewer times a child spoke, the fewer words he or she heard from adults, and the fewer conversational turns the child took.

For every additional hour the TV was on, the number of adult words spoken fell by 771.

Normally, the researchers note in their report in the Archives of Pediatrics

"It's almost as if television displaces talk completely," Christakis said.

While some of the reduction in talk could have been because children were left alone in front of the TV, he added, it's also likely that adults were distracted by the TV themselves and less likely to interact with the child.

He and his colleagues point out that 30 percent of US households admit to having the TV on all the time, even when nobody's watching. The findings also call into question claims by makers of DVDs and videos for kids that these products promote parent-child interaction, they add.

Such programs have been heavily marketed to parents, Christakis noted, and many moms and dads have come to depend on them. "I get asked by parents all the time how am I supposed to make dinner if I can't sit my child in front of the TV," he said. One alternative he suggested: Sit the child on the kitchen floor and give him a pan and a spoon to play with.

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