Relationship between Television and Language Development
The basic categories of language development from birth to five years include attention and comprehension, vocabulary development, expressive language, grammar and pre-literacy skills of phonological awareness, knowledge of narrative and of literacy. These skills are linked with toddler and preschooler language ability and reflect the main body of research in this field.
According to the Department of Education, language skills are best developed through reading and interactions with others in conversation and play. Excessive television watching can impede this development. Hours spent watching TV make risk-taking and social relationships difficult for many children.
Childrens Television
The classification of childrens television is plain and simple as one can straightaway say that the program may be either entertaining or educational. But, in reality, they are not what they meant to be. According to research, for children between the ages of two and five, high-quality educational television aids in many aspects of language development. But, children under the age of two dont gain anything from the educational and entertainment programming. Educational programs on television have a positive influence on children depending on their age and their pre-existing cognitive and language development and also the age-suitability of the content viewed. The following are the results of two major researches conducted to prove the effect of television on the delayed language development of kids.
Association between Television Viewing and Language Development in Children Under Age 2 Years
In order to study the association of television exposure with language development in children under age 2 years, a research was conducted among 1008 parents of children between the age group 2-24 months. The ages were confirmed by checking the birth certificates of the kids and the survey was conducted over telephone in February 2006. Questions regarding child and parent demography, interaction between parent and child and childs viewing of television programs were asked. Those parents involved in the research filled a form of the Mac-Arthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI).
Face to face as well as telephonic interviews were conducted to assess the time spent on television and parental perceptions of television viewing towards their childs development. Language development was assessed at the age of 2 years using the Clinical Linguistic Auditory Milestone Scale. A multi-variety logistic regression model was employed to analyze how television viewing is associated with the delayed language development of kids.
The association between normal CDI scores and television exposure were measured using the results of the questions.
The analysis revealed a negative impact of television on vocabulary acquisition in children between the ages of 8 to 16 months. A 17-point difference was associated in the analysis with each hour the baby watches television corresponds to a difference of about 6-8 words for a typical child out of the 90 included in the research. There are various reasons given for this association.
There is a strong advertisement given for various DVDsvideos that are intended to build a childs cognitive, language and brain development. Parents blindly believe it and expose their children to watch those DVDs and videos that produce the reverse results.
Another reason for the association between the childs vocabulary and TV viewing is that of residual confounding. Two examples can be given to illustrate this fact. Those parents who have a hectic work schedule at office, after returning home greatly rely on the childrens DVDs and videos to make their kids not to disturb them. Another example is that the parents of children who watch a heavy dose of programs in televisions are less likely to motivate their children in improving their language skill. Those children who keep watching television for a long duration are prone to face a deleterious effect on early language development.
Researchers say that a childs brain develops in a faster phase only between the ages of 0-3years. Environmental factors play a vital role in the brain-development of a child. When a kid watches TV, heshe is exposed to extensive absorbing but there is no developmentally constructive stimulus involved. This affects the brain development and language acquisition. The maximum time parents spend talking to their children and the maximum verbal input they give their kids, higher are the chances of language development. Baby DVDs contain limited language and display certain formal features that are not meant to help in vocabulary learning instead it leads to habits of mind that actually impedes it. Childrens programs usually have short scenes, little dialogues and a variety of visually salient but linguistically indescribable events. Though the childrens educational shows are carefully designed to meet the developmental needs of preschoolers, children under 2 years are unable to understand the cognitive and linguistic content of the show.
Cognitive development under 2 years of age can easily be measured by the vocabulary growth as it can be easily observed and also on of the major developmental tasks of the age. According to parents who allow the kids to watch TV programs, potential educational and brain development benefits are the main reasons for doing so. This research has much strength and a few shortcomings. The main strength is its effort to find out the association between television viewing and vocabulary growth. The main defect of the survey is that it is not representative of general population. Though the variables on which the sample is not representative are controlled in this analysis, there is a possibility for other family and child attributes that were left unobserved and it might have affected the sample, exposure and the outcome. A follow up study can be conducted to see whether the association identified has lasting significance.
Exploring the Relationship between Television Viewing and Language Development
Mark Milkovich, Mark Miller, Erwin Bettinghaus and Charles Atkin conducted a research among all kinder-garden through sixth grade students at an elementary school in a small mid-western city. Their television-viewing habits were assessed by asking them to indicate how often they watch shows selected on the basis of their popularity among children up to age eleven. On that basis, a measurement of language development was made. The reason behind this study is that, as the linguistic maturity of the children grows, they are able to recognize increasingly complex relationship among the words in the language. In the survey, the children were provided with a single stimulus word and asked to give a single word in response. Later, coders were asked to got through the data and recognize the relationship between the each stimulus-response pair. Since there were several types of relationships for each pair of words and each of them was complex, they were examined individually.
The results of the study showed a consistent negative effect of television on the rate of language development. The fact that the effects are not larger than they are in terms of magnitude is not the exact reason for avoiding giving them careful consideration. Even if one child is judged to have an excellent vocabulary while the other has not, the observable differences in their actual behavior will correspond to only a small percentage of their total output. It is said to be a situation where small difference makes much bigger difference.
The research demonstrated the ill-effects of television on language development and provided indications of the nature of those effects. It also highlighted the research problems that must be overcome if someone attempts to provide a definitive statement on the effects of viewing on language development and suggested means for their solution.
Results of a Few Findings that Refuse the Hypotheses
Positive influence of educational television greatly rely on the age of the child, their pre-existing cognitive and language development and also the age appropriateness of the viewed content. Some of the findings are list below.
Before 18-22 months, children may learn effectively from live situations compared to television
Songs and speech from television are often imitated children by between 18 and 24 months
According to what parents believe, children learn language from television at 30 months. In an Australian study, parent interviews of children at 30 months demonstrated 86 percentage of 103 children in the study learned language 52 per cent learned musicrhymessong.
Few programmes such as Sesame Street help pre-school children to learn.
Children of age group between two and three who view programme Sesame Street have higher scores on language, maths and they get the readiness to go to school at age five. Watching educational software programs such as Sesame Street between ages two and three forecasted higher scores on language, maths and readiness to go school at age five.
Four-year-old children who spent a little more time watching this program Sesame Street are more probable than others who do not view this program to identify colours, count up to 20, recognize letters and tell connected stories.
Interest in learning and a positive insight of school learning are found in children viewing educational television show signs, which is retained in high school
According to the findings from the studies conducted on children of different age group, one can conclude that television viewing among young children have a detrimental effect on their language development. Though there are many studies that proved the above statement to be true, there also exist evidences from a few other researches that supports the idea of television viewing promotes language development. Interaction with adults was found to be the best suggestion for raising infant comprehension (imitation). If a child is extensively exposed to television, it may mean that interaction with adults is reduced. One can leave it in the hands of parents to make their own informed parental choices and decisions based on scientific information. However, it is advisable to keep television viewing hours to a minimum, especially for the under-twos.
To carry out the research, the pubmed central served as the main source for document retrieval. Google scholar also provided a few sources. At the time of search and retrieval, 13 articles appeared for television research in pubmed.com and around 4000 titles appeared in google scholar. Search terms for television include television, media and video as well as childrens television, educational television and television research. For language, terms like language skills, speech skills, speech communication, oral communication, language acquisition, language development, language disability, comprehension and vocabulary development are used. Terms searched for the age range were infant, pre-school, and early childhood. All the sources cited were secondary sources.
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