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CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES

Debating the Impact of Television and Video Material on Very Young Children: Attention, Learning, and the Developing Brain
Mary L. Courage and Alissa E. Setliff Memorial University

ABSTRACTThe

debate about the potential of television and video material to enhance or diminish cognitive development in infants and toddlers has been complicated by speculation regarding the relation between early exposure to these media and the developing brain. Those on both sides of the debate draw on ndings from developmental and neuroscience literatures to make explicit or implicit arguments that video experience during the rst 2 or 3 years can have a unique and powerful impact on learning that cannot be readily duplicated or undone outside this sensitive period of development. This article tries to put such speculation into perspective by considering it within the framework of W. T. Greenough, J. T. Black, and C. S. Wallaces (1987) distinction between experience-expectant and experience-dependent plasticity. Data from infant-learning and attention research are used to illustrate how this distinction illuminates both sides of the debate.

toddler; television; video; attention; learning; brain development Concern about the dramatic increase in infants and toddlers exposure to electronic visual media has prompted a vigorous debate on the positive and negative potentials of television and videos to affect the cognitive and social development of very young viewers. Although research on the impact of these media on preschoolers and school-aged children has a long history (Pecora, Murray, & Wartella, 2007), the debate has only recently
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mary L. Courage, Department of Psychology, Memorial University, St. Johns, NL, A1B 3X9, Canada; e-mail: mcourage@mun.ca.
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KEYWORDSinfant;

2009, Copyright the Author(s) Journal Compilation # 2009, Society for Research in Child Development

included infants and toddlers, who are currently the target audience for a plethora of video material. The availability of this new content adds to growing concerns about the amount of exposure young children already have to background TV that is not directed at them specically (Anderson & Pempek, 2005). As with any debate in which the stakes are high, opposing views can become polarized and rhetoric can obscure science. On one side is the view expressed in the American Academy of Pediatrics (2001) policy statement recommending that children younger than the age of 2 years not watch any television or video material because the time spent viewing is time lost from more interactive and brain-enriching activities implicit in social exchanges, language, and play. Although no direct evidence is provided with the recommendation, the concern behind it may be well founded. Recent reports by the Kaiser Family Foundation (Rideout & Hamel, 2006) conrmed that electronic media have indeed become a central focus in the lives of infants and toddlers. On a typical day, about 60% of them watch television or videos for an estimated 12 hr. In addition, 40% live in households where the television is on most or all the time and occasional viewing commonly begins as early as 3 months of age. Older toddlers have some degree of control over their viewing: 38% can turn a TV on by themselves, 40% can change channels, 7% can put on a video without help, and 19% have a television in their bedrooms. On the opposite side of the debate are those who advocate ageappropriate media for infants and toddlers as an opportunity to enhance learning and brain development, and many videos either explicitly or implicitly endorse this expectation in their promotional materials (Garrison & Christakis, 2005). Although claims about the enrichment value of these media are unsubstantiated, 30% of parents in a recent survey indicated that learning and brain development were among their primary reasons for providing age-appropriate videos to their infants (Zimmerman, Christakis, & Meltzoff, 2007). Advocates of videos

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for babies who look to scientic data for guidance point to research showing (a) greater readiness for school among preschoolers who watched Sesame Street and other educational shows (Anderson, 1998; Wright et al., 2001) and (b) the positive association between viewing certain types of television content (e.g., Blues Clues) and language development (Linebarger & Walker, 2005). These ndings, along with research that documents infants remarkable ability to learn and remember (Bauer, 2007), make the notion of optimizing early learning via highquality video material both plausible and attractive to parents. The issues at the heart of this debate about babies and the media are not trivial and will be resolved only by the results of systematic developmental research from behavioral and brain sciences (Anderson & Kirkorian, 2006; Anderson & Pempek, 2005; Barr, in press). Like all good science, this formal examination takes time. In advance of this, advocates on both sides of the debate, extrapolating from established ndings in the cognitive developmental and neuroscience literatures, promote their case with conjecture about the way in which video experience might affect learning and brain development. An example of this is the expectation that experiences during the rst 3 years can have a unique and powerful impact on brain development that cannot readily be duplicated or undone later when the sensitive period for neural plasticity has passed (Christakis & Zimmerman, 2005; Garrison & Christakis, 2005). Parents are seen as the architects of this process whose choices (for better or for worse) can determine the long-term outcome of this critical brain development. Such misapprehensions about the scope of sensitive periods in development are not new. They have appeared in the past with peaks in public concern about salient issues in early child development (e.g., the effectiveness of cognitive interventions such as Head Start) and become championed by policy makers and practitioners who look to brain sciences research to advance particular agendas. Often, such issues gain media attention, and in the process, relevant ndings become oversimplied when removed from their research contexts (Thompson & Nelson, 2001). Although scientists have attempted to clarify myths about the rst 3 years (Bruer, 1999; Kagan, 1998; Nelson, 1999), the misconceptions remain entrenched and are implicit in the debate about the impact of video material on cognitive development. For example, those who believe that video material is harmful to brain development cite studies suggesting that extensive television viewing places infants and toddlers at risk for attention decit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and poorer performance on tests of reading and short-term memory in childhood (Christakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe, & McCarthy, 2004; Zimmerman & Christakis, 2005). Those who favor infantdirected video material cite the classic studies in which juvenile rats (and the young of other species) raised in complex environments have more dendrites, synapses, capillary volume, and astrocytes per neuron, and perform better on certain learning tasks than do control animals (Greenough & Black, 1992).

Generalizing these ndings to human infants, they make the case that more is better and see educational video as a means of providing more. Although both arguments have been widely cited, they go beyond the data on which they are based. Because of the importance of this issue, these disparate perspectives need to be critically examined.
TELEVISION AND VIDEO VIEWING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INFANT ATTENTION

The development of the alerting, orienting, and executive components of attention and the neural networks and behaviors that comprise them emerge from endogenous neurobiological processes in interaction with typical sensory, cognitive, and caregiving environments. The alerting and orienting networks that guide the direction of attention and the selection of targets are present at birth in nascent form and mature rapidly over the rst 6 months. The higher order executive network provides the basis for the voluntary control of attention and behavior needed to adapt to the demands of particular situations. This network undergoes a protracted period of development, with signicant advances between 2 and 7 years of age, although precursor components of endogenous control and self-regulation appear earlier in infancy (Colombo, 2001; Posner & Rothbart, 2007; Richards, 1998; Ruff & Rothbart, 1996). There is currently a broad consensus from research that decits in attention (e.g., ADHD) are attributable largely to neurological and genetic factors and to a lesser extent to biohazard exposure, with social factors being of minor importance (Barkley, 2006; Rietveld, Hudziak, Bartels, van Beijsterveldt, & Boomsma, 2004). This consensus notwithstanding, concerns about the impact of television on the development of the attention networks persist. Such concerns were rst raised in the 1970s following the appearance of fast-paced childrens television programming such as Sesame Street and a correlated increase in reported attention problems (e.g., distractibility, hyperactivity) in school (Geist & Gibson, 2000; Healey, 1990; Singer, 1980). Although this complex issue was not resolved (Acevedo-Polakovich, Lorch, & Milich, 2007; Anderson, 1998), it has recently received renewed interest in the infant and toddler literature. For example, Christakis et al. (2004) analyzed parent-report data from two large-scale surveys from the 1990s and found a signicant correlation between the amount of television children viewed at 1 and 3 years of age and subsequent attention problems that were consistent with ADHD. They noted several methodological caveats, including the fact that their data did not establish a causal link between television viewing and later attention problems. Moreover, their criteria for identifying an attention problem only partially overlapped those typically used to arrive at a formal diagnosis of ADHD. This may have broadened the pool of children said to have an attention decit and likely included those with transient behaviors that were not clinically signicant (e.g., restlessness). Zimmerman and

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Christakis (2007) rened their conclusion following the analysis of data from a more recent survey. The relation between the amount of television viewed by children younger than 3 years and attention difculties 5 years later was still signicant when the content of the programs was categorized as violent or nonviolent entertainment, but when the content was educational, it was not signicant. The amount and type of television viewed by 4- to 5-year-olds were unrelated to later attention. The authors interpret this to mean that the rst 3 years are a critical period for potential harm from viewing fast-paced television. However, the absence of an effect among the older children suggests that the problem may be transitory. Christakis and Zimmerman proposed a variety of neural and attention processes that might account for the relation between TV viewing in children younger than 3 years and later attention problems. They suggested that exposure to the unnaturally fast pace of sound and image change in video material during this sensitive period might alter synaptic connections in the neural networks underlying attention and shorten the infants attention span. Further, this fast pace repeatedly elicits the orienting response at the expense of sustained attention and information processing, compelling infants to stare xedly at the screen. However, this is not consistent with current research that shows that from as early as 6 months of age, infants are able to regulate their attention processes during periods of extended viewing. They sustain their attention across changes in the formal features (e.g., pace, sound) of the material (especially when it is comprehensible), and coincident heart-rate decelerations and resistance to distraction during extended looking indicate that they process the material at some level (Richards & Anderson, 2004). Moreover, like older children and adults, infants and toddlers frequently look away from (or habituate to) video material as toys or other competing stimuli attract their attention (Barr, Zack, Garcia, & Muentener, 2008; Schmidt, Pempek, Kirkorian, Lund, & Anderson, 2008; Setliff, Avery, Earle, Murphy, & Courage, 2007). The study by Christakis et al. (2004) is widely cited and has attracted media attention. However, most reports have overlooked other research that failed to support (albeit with 3.5- to 5-year-olds) the Christakis et al. interpretation of the data. For example, two studies that used more stringent measures to identify a childhood attention problem reported a positive association between television viewing and later attention problems but concluded that the effect size was too small to be meaningful (Miller et al., 2007; Stevens & Muslow, 2006). A third found no relation between television viewing and later attention problems (Obel et al., 2004). Also overlooked are viable alternative or supplementary explanations for the correlation between television viewing and decits in attention. These include the fact that children with ADHD may be actively encouraged to watch television at home because it provides parents a respite from the high level of care that these children require. In addition, children with ADHD are often unpopular

with peers and may watch TV to ll their leisure time. Further, the role that hereditary and neurobiological factors play in mediating the relationship between TV viewing and ADHD has been underestimated (Acevedo-Polakovich et al., 2007; Barkley, 2006; Miller et al., 2007).
TELEVISION AND VIDEO VIEWING AS A FORUM FOR INFANT AND TODDLER LEARNING

Infants and toddlers are procient in encoding, storing, and retrieving information about their experiences (Bauer, 2007; Oakes & Bauer, 2007). Given this early competence and the signicant amount of attention that infants and toddlers direct to video material (Barr et al., 2008), the expectation that they might acquire new information from age-appropriate video material is reasonable. Several studies have used imitation paradigms to examine this question (Barr & Hayne, 1999; Hayne, Herbert, & Simcock, 2003; McCall, Parke, & Kavanaugh, 1977; Meltzoff, 1988). A common though paradoxical nding has been that infants and toddlers do not readily imitate actions viewed on video media, although they will easily imitate the same actions viewed live (but see Barr, Muentener, & Garcia, 2007). This video decit (Anderson & Pempek, 2005) has also been observed in connection with object-retrieval, wordlearning, and language-recognition tasks (Krcmar, Grela, & Lin, 2007; Kuhl, Tsao, & Liu, 2003; Schmitt & Anderson, 2002; Troseth & DeLoache, 1998; Troseth, Saylor, & Archer, 2006). Research on the video decit indicates that a conuence of perceptual, cognitive, and social immaturities makes learning from video media difcult for very young children. This difculty arises from (a) the problems they have in equating information obtained from the 2-D video format with that of the corresponding 3-D live source (Barr, Muentener, Garcia, Fujimoto, & Chavez, 2007; Troseth & DeLoache, 1998) and (b) the fact that their everyday experience with video tells them that its content is neither real nor directed to them personally and therefore is not a source of useful information (Troseth, 2003). Mitigation of these factors (e.g., by repetition) improved performance (e.g., Barr, Muentener, & Garcia, 2007, Barr, Muentener, Garcia, Fujimoto, et al., 2007; Barr et al., 2008) but eliminated the advantage of live learning only when the video model interacted with the child prior to testing (Troseth et al., 2006). Although infants and toddlers do not readily imitate from television before their 3rd year, other behaviors indicate that they are sensitive to its content and can acquire new information from it long before then. In various studies, for example, 12- to 18-month-olds played more with toys that they saw on television than they did with novel toys (McCall et al., 1977), 12-montholds avoided a novel toy after watching a televised model show negative affect to it (Mumme & Fernald, 2003), 18- but not 14-month-olds showed a visual preference for a novel toy after a televised model engaged infants in joint reference during

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familiarization with another toy (Cleveland & Striano, 2008), and 18-month-olds who viewed video information related to a forgotten sequence of toy-play events had their recollection of the sequence reinstated (Shefeld & Hudson, 2006). Although these examples indicate that infants can discriminate correspondences between a video image and what it depicts at some level, the nature of what they acquire and their understanding of the video events are unclear (Pierroutsakos & Troseth, 2003). That infants and toddlers can learn from video material under certain conditions begs the question of whether or not providing them such material is a viable alternative to providing learning opportunities by engaging them directly (e.g., verbal exchanges, joint referencing). Infants are inherently social beings, and much of their cognitive development emerges in a social context. From birth, they are increasingly sensitive and responsive to the social cues they get from others (Baldwin & Moses, 2001; Muir & Nadel, 1998). Consistent with this, Barr et al. (2008) showed that toddlers who viewed infant-directed videos with their parents looked longer at the videos and were more responsive (e.g., vocalizing, pointing) to them, when the parents provided scaffolding (e.g., descriptions, labeling, pointing) during viewing. Such interactions that direct the childs attention to age-appropriate content can potentially increase comprehension and learning, especially if they are repeated (Barr, Muentener, Garcia, Fujimoto, et al., 2007). However, as the rate of parentchild coviewing at home is only about 50% (Zimmerman et al., 2007), infants and toddlers often view videos alone. Collectively, these studies indicate that although young children can learn from video under certain constrained conditions, they do not do so readily. This does not bode well for the argument that infant-directed videos are likely to facilitate learning, making the further question of enriching the infant brain moot.
EXPERIENCE AND THE BRAIN: WHAT WE DO KNOW

What is often overlooked in speculation about the way in which early experience (e.g., cognitive interventions, television, language exposure) might affect brain development is that different kinds of experiences affect this development in different ways. A useful framework in which to consider this is the one proposed by Greenough, Black, and Wallace (1987). In their model, experience causes changes in the brain in two primary ways, through experience-expectant development and through experiencedependent development. Experience-expectant development occurs in neural and sensory systems that require (i.e., expect) particular types of stimulation during certain time-restricted sensitive periods in order for optimal development to occur. Normally, these are species typical (e.g., vision, hearing, emotion), and the requisite experiences themselves (e.g., light, sound, caregiver) are ubiquitous and readily available in the normal environment. Experience-expectant development involves the stabilization and regression of preexisting connec-

tions that were produced (and overproduced), independent of experience, in the late prenatal and early postnatal months (Bruer & Greenough, 2001; Huttenlocher, 2002). In this case, experience conrms early labile synaptic contacts and provides them with functional specialization. In contrast, experiencedependent development results from experiences that are unique to each member of the species and to the physical and social environments they inhabit. This type of development is age and time independent and allow us to adapt and learn from unique experiences across the life span. The neural changes that result from experience-dependent stimulation involve the strengthening of synaptic connections or the generation of new ones. This distinction of the differential role that experience has on the developing brain can inform the debate on the impact of video material on infant development. As a starting point, both advocates and opponents recognize the fact that there are a number of sensitive periods in brain growth, during which certain classes of stimuli are required (or are to be avoided) for optimal development. Questions about sensitive periods are typically questions about experience-expectant development (Bruer & Greenough, 2001). However, the proponents of video for babies should also recognize that the classes of structures and functions that are experience expectant in their development are quite limited and do not include changes in the brain that result from learning new information from educational video (or books, or music, or ash cards). These changes are experience dependent and therefore are neither critical nor time restricted to the infant and toddler years. Indeed, the stable morphological changes that occur in the brains of juvenile rats in response to complex environments occur in older animals as well (Briones, Klintsova, & Greenough, 2004). The argument of those who oppose video for babies as potentially damaging to the orienting and executive attention networks also concerns processes that, in the Greenough and Black (1992) framework, are experience expectant. The development of the orienting network is tied to neural mechanisms in the visual system whose ubiquitous expected (required) stimuli are the targets that normally appear in the visual eld. Once synapses have been committed to visual and spatial orienting functions in the early postnatal months, they will not be modied (i.e., rewired) by experience-dependent processes such as exposure to video images, even those that change at a pace faster than real time (Nelson & Horowitz, 1987). The executive network undergoes its major development beyond the infant and toddler years, although its antecedents are evident in that time frame. Because the decits in attention that have been associated with television viewing are typically those of the executive network, establishing a causal link would require evidence that the early development of the network can be perturbed by video exposure. Inasmuch as infants and toddlers can and do regulate their attention to video and will likely look away or cry if their viewing becomes excessive or aversive, the

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emergence of such evidence seems unlikely (Harman, Rothbart, & Posner, 1997; Stifter & Moyer, 1991).
CONCLUSIONS

It is premature either to condemn television and video material as a source of harm to the developing infant brain or to promote it as a viable source of early learning. The evidence that this material contributes to attention decits in later childhood is weak, although it has been prominent in the media. One effect of this has been to distract from the growing evidence that the origin of clinically signicant decits in attention lies primarily in the neurobiological and genetic factors that underpin the development of executive attention. It should be noted, however, that as this latter evidence does not preclude a contributing role for experience on the nal outcome, the positive association between video viewing and inattention that has been reported should not be ignored. There may well be experience-dependent pathways through which viewing videos are detrimental to very young viewers. For example, if viewing time diminishes other, more active and interactive endeavors, a child may be at risk for poor cognitive outcomes that are only coincidentally related to video viewing. The issue of whether videos (or any other medium) can provide a meaningful, enriched experience for infants and toddlers beyond that of a normal environment is not resolved. Indeed, Greenough and Black (1992) noted that the complex environment that enhanced brain morphology and function in their juvenile and adult rats was more akin to a normal rat environment that to an enriched environment. They suggest that providing a supercomplex environment will not necessarily yield additional benets. Although this remains an empirical question, we do know that infants learn most effectively from live models in a direct and dynamic social context. Whether videos will ever compete with human interaction will depend on the ingenuity of their creators to overcome the video decit. Until then, what parents and professionals require from this debate are evidence-based guidelines for the appropriate use of television and video by infants and toddlers.

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