Your Baby Can Read
Author's Note
Krcmar, 2011; DeLoache et al., 2010; Dynia et al., 2021; Neuman et al., 2014 assessed the effectiveness of teaching technology and media on teaching infants language and reading skills.
Introduction
How effective are baby media products at teaching infants reading and language acquisition skills? Baby media products such as Your Baby Can Read and Baby Einstein are learning toys marketed towards the parents of infant children. These products claim to teach infant children language acquisition skills and reading skills. About 40% of mothers report that they believe baby media has helped their infant learn (DeLoache et al., 2010) but studies conducted by DeLoache et al. (2010), Dynia et al. (2021), Krcmar (2011), and Neuman et al. (2014), suggest that baby media products do not significantly contribute to infant language development. The aforementioned studies examined the effect of baby media on teaching infant language skills. Specifically, these studies aimed to compare learning from baby media to typical infant development via parent interaction and measure how well baby media teaches infants language acquisition skills. Since baby media does not significantly contribute to language acquisition skills in infants, caretakers should instead consider increasing parent-child interaction.
Language Acquisition Through Media
Krcmar (2011) examined the effectiveness of digital media on infant language development. This experiment tested if infants would learn words better from either a live model (the infant’s caretaker) or a Baby Einstein video to determine if there is an interaction between the age words were acquired and word recall. The participants were infants from the ages 4-23 months. The initial conditions of this experiment were live exposure from the infant’s parents or video exposure to Baby Einstein, a popular baby DVD in which unfamiliar objects and words were shown to the infant. After the initial condition was administered, the infants were then placed in front of a posttest video which showed the objects and words from the previous condition. Preferential looking data was collected from eye-tracking, which measured how long the infants stared at the unfamiliar words and objects.
The results of this study revealed that infants in the parent interaction condition were better at recalling learned words compared to infants in the video condition. In fact, even though the infants looked longer at the novel objects in the video condition, they only learned them in the live condition. These results indicate that learning from videos is not as effective as live interaction, possibly due to overwhelming input coming from the videos and the lack of understanding that is derived from symbols on the screen. This evidence suggests that babies do not need teaching technology to enhance their language acquisition abilities. Given this info, parents should consider the cost of purchasing baby media compared to live caretaker interaction to help infants develop language acquisition skills.
DeLoache et al. (2010) examined the effectiveness of a commercial baby learning DVD at teaching infants ages 12-18 months new words. Compared to the Krcmar (2011) study, the DeLoache et al. (2010) study isolated words learned from baby videos compared to typical language acquisition development by determining how many words infants learned from watching the video and how many words infants learned when their caretakers taught them. This experiment lasted 4 weeks and compared four conditions: 1) video and interaction in which both infant and caretaker watched the baby word learning DVD together, 2) video and no interaction in which the infant watched the DVD without their caretaker, 3) parent-teaching interaction in which the infants were taught the same words introduced in the video by their parents, and 4) the control condition in which the vocabulary level of the infants were compared against the three previous conditions.
Infants in all experimental conditions were first introduced to the 25 words in a pre-test. The pre-test was followed by showing the 25 words in word-pairs with a target word from the 25 word list and a distractor. The infants were then asked to identify that target word by pointing at a picture of it. A posttest was administered the same way as the pretest; by asking infants to identify the original 25 words. Results showed that infants more accurately identified words in the parent-teaching interaction condition when compared to the video with/without parent interaction condition and control. These results indicate that language acquisition from baby learning media is more accurately attributed to typical infant development and that infant learning videos do not significantly contribute to word learning.
Language-learning Environment
The previously reviewed studies examined the effectiveness of baby media at teaching infants language acquisition skills, but what effect does the screen time itself have on language development? Dynia et al. (2021) studied how infants acquired new words from baby media and if limiting media use to less than 1 hour per day (in accordance with the American Association of Pediatrics [AAP] recommendation) was beneficial for language acquisition. Infants of low socio-economic status (SES) families often show lower language acquisition abilities by kindergarten. This effect could be attributed to their environment as they are less likely to be exposed to as many vocabulary terms and spend more time in front of TV media than high SES infants The sample for this study consisted of 157 mother-infant pairs from low SES families. The infants were measured at 27-31 months of age and 33-36 months of age for their expressive and receptive language skills. Expressive language is how well children communicate about themselves and receptive language is how well a child understands communication towards them.
Media exposure was measured over 6 months by mothers reporting how many hours per weekday their child watched television and smart devices. Language acquisition was measured by: the Bayley Scale of Infant and Toddler Development Third Edition which measured receptive and expressive language skills by identifying developmental delays and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition which measured hearing and comprehension of single-word vocabulary terms. The results showed that low SES infants were exposed to an average of 3.5 hours of media per day which was correlated with lower receptive and expressive language skills. Media usage was more significantly related to expressive language than receptive language which could mean that expressive language is more affected by media because it replaces parent-child communication. The results also suggested that the AAP recommendation of less than 1 hour per day of media usage was not related to language development. High baby media exposure is related to lower language acquisition skills, specifically, expressive language development. Low SES infants are more likely to be exposed to baby media than high SES infants which suggests that limiting exposure to baby media and increasing the amount of parent-child interactions would increase word learning.
Reading Skills in Infancy
Many baby media products claim to teach babies how to read but Neuman et al. (2014) decided to test the accuracy of this claim. To test how effective baby media is at teaching reading skills, infants ages 10-18 months old were assigned to either the control condition in which they were not exposed to any baby media or the experimental condition in which parents played Your Baby Can Read, a popular 5 volume DVD set that claimed to teach 20-27 words per volume. All infants were administered the Bayley Scale of Infant and Toddler Development III as a baseline measure of vocabulary. Across 7 months, infants were administered 14 eye-tracking tasks that measured various skills related to early language ability such as spoken language, distinct units of sounds/meaning, knowledge of written first name, letter/word properties, recognition of (previously learned) words, and reading with meaning. Results showed that infants in the experimental baby media condition did not learn to read more efficiently than infants in the control condition. Out of the 14 previously mentioned reading measures, 13 were null, meaning they showed absolutely zero significance at helping infants learn to read. Neuman et al. (2014) measured how effective baby media was at teaching reading skills by examining letter/sound understanding and decoding abilities as well as vocabulary and reading comprehension abilities. Results from the 14 reading tasks showed that baby media had no significant effect on reading ability. Baby media products do not contribute to language acquisition skills in infants.
Conclusion
Parent interaction with their infant children is recommended to parents who want to promote their infant’s language acquisition skills. Based on Krcmer (2011)’s research, it is strongly recommended to engage in interactive activities with infants such as reading and play to help develop infant language skills. Infants of low socio-economic status (SES) families often show lower language acquisition by kindergarten (Dynia et al., 2021). This effect could be attributed to their environment as they are less likely to be exposed to as many vocabulary terms and spend more time in front of media than high SES infants (Dynia et al., 2021). A recommendation for low SES families who want to increase infant word learning is to avoid long exposure to baby media in favor of daily parent-child interaction. Purchasing baby media comes with both a financial and opportunity cost over parent-child interaction (Dynia et al., 2021). Research from DeLoache et al. (2010) and Neuman et al. (2014) indicates that baby media does not contribute to language learning in infants which implies that there is no benefit to purchasing baby media products. Limiting exposure to media and increasing the amount of parent-child interaction will help create a language-rich environment to scaffold infant language acquisition.
References
DeLoache, J. S., Chiong, C., Sherman, K., Islam, N., Vanderborght, M., Troseth, G. L., Strouse, G. A., & O'Doherty, K. (2010). Do babies learn from baby media?. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1570–1574.
Dynia, J. M., Dore, R. A., Bates, R. A., & Justice, L. M. (2021). Media exposure and language for toddlers from low-income homes. Infant Behavior & Development, 63, 101542.
Krcmar, M. (2011). Word learning in very young children from infant-directed DVDs. Journal of Communication, 61, 780-794.
Neuman, S. B., Kaefer, T., Pinkham, A., & Strouse, G. (2014). Can babies learn to read? A randomized trial of baby media. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(3), 815-830.