Video comprehensibility and attention in very young children.

Earlier research established that preschool children pay less attention to television that is sequentially or linguistically incomprehensible. The authors of this study determined the youngest age for which this effect can be found. One hundred and three 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24-month-olds' looking and heart rate were recorded while they watched Teletubbies, a television program designed for very young children. Experimenters manipulated comprehensibility by either randomly ordering shots or reversing dialogue to become backward speech. Infants watched 1 normal segment and 1 distorted version of the same segment. Only 24-month-olds, and to some extent 18-month-olds, distinguished between normal and distorted videos by looking for longer durations toward the normal stimuli. The results suggest that it may not be until the middle of the second year that children demonstrate the earliest beginnings of comprehension of video as it is currently produced.

[1]  Rachel Barr,et al.  Reenactment of televised content by 2-year olds: toddlers use language learned from television to solve a difficult imitation problem. , 2008, Infant behavior & development.

[2]  Jennings Bryant,et al.  Children's Understanding of Television: Research on Attention and Comprehension , 1983 .

[3]  Elizabeth Pugzles Lorch,et al.  The Effects of TV Program Comprehensibility on Preschool Children's Visual Attention to Television. , 1981 .

[4]  A. Hollenbeck,et al.  Infant visual and vocal responses to television. , 1979, Child development.

[5]  G. Berntson,et al.  An approach to artifact identification: application to heart period data. , 1990, Psychophysiology.

[6]  M. Rothbart,et al.  Attention in Early Development: Themes and Variations , 1996 .

[7]  Lois Bloom,et al.  Language acquisition in its developmental context , 1998 .

[8]  W Schiff,et al.  Infant sensitivity to audiovisually coherent events , 1989, Psychological research.

[9]  Daniel R. Anderson.  A NEUROSCIENCE OF CHILDREN AND MEDIA? , 2007 .

[10]  V. Strasburger,et al.  Children, adolescents, and television. , 1990, Pediatrics in review.

[11]  Dimitri A Christakis,et al.  Early television exposure and subsequent attentional problems in children. , 2004, Pediatrics.

[12]  J. Richards,et al.  Extended visual fixation and distractibility in children from six to twenty-four months of age. , 2001, Child development.

[13]  V. Strasburger,et al.  Media Education , 1999, Pediatrics.

[14]  Daniel R. Anderson,et al.  Form and content: looking at visual features of television. , 1999, Developmental psychology.

[15]  Attention and Cognitive Development , 2011 .

[16]  P. Muentener,et al.  Infants' Attention and Responsiveness to Television Increases With Prior Exposure and Parental Interaction , 2008 .

[17]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  Some Beginnings of Word Comprehension in 6-Month-Olds , 1999 .

[18]  Daniel R. Anderson,et al.  Television and Reality: Toddlers' Use of Visual Information from Video to Guide Behavior , 2002 .

[19]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Variability in early communicative development. , 1994, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[20]  E. Lorch,et al.  Preschool children's attention to television: visual attention and probe response times. , 1997, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[21]  S L Oviatt,et al.  The emerging ability to comprehend language: an experimental approach. , 1980, Child development.

[22]  Daniel R. Anderson,et al.  Attentional inertia in children's extended looking at television. , 2004, Advances in child development and behavior.

[23]  Rachel Barr,et al.  The effect of repetition on imitation from television during infancy. , 2007, Developmental psychobiology.

[24]  Richie Poulton,et al.  Does Childhood Television Viewing Lead to Attention Problems in Adolescence? Results From a Prospective Longitudinal Study , 2007, Pediatrics.

[25]  Jodie A. Baird,et al.  Infants parse dynamic action. , 2001, Child development.

[26]  Dimitri A Christakis,et al.  Children's television viewing and cognitive outcomes: a longitudinal analysis of national data. , 2005, Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine.

[27]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  Associations between media viewing and language development in children under age 2 years. , 2007, The Journal of pediatrics.

[28]  Nicole M. Petrovich,et al.  Cortical Activation While Watching Video Montage: An fMRI Study , 2006 .

[29]  Kathy Hirsh-Pasek,et al.  The Origins of Grammar: Evidence from Early Language Comprehension , 1999 .

[30]  H. Wellman,et al.  Infants' understanding of object-directed action , 2005, Cognition.

[31]  J. Deloache,et al.  The medium can obscure the message: young children's understanding of video. , 1998, Child development.

[32]  I. Sigel,et al.  HANDBOOK OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY , 2006 .

[33]  John P. Pinto,et al.  Rapid Gains in Speed of Verbal Processing by Infants in the 2nd Year , 1998 .

[34]  H. Hayne,et al.  Developmental changes in imitation from television during infancy. , 1999, Child development.

[35]  Daniel R. Anderson,et al.  Attentional Inertia and Recognition Memory in Adult Television Viewing , 1993 .

[36]  E. Lorch,et al.  Attentional inertia reduces distractibility during young children's TV viewing. , 1987, Child development.

[37]  Linda F. Alwitt,et al.  Watching Children Watch Television , 1979 .

[38]  J. Richards,et al.  Extended visual fixation in young infants: look distributions, heart rate changes, and attention. , 1997, Child development.

[39]  J. Pind.  The Discovery of Spoken Language, Peter W. Jusczyk (Ed.). MIT Press (1997), ISBN 0 262 10058 4 , 1997 .

[40]  Georgene L. Troseth,et al.  TV guide: two-year-old children learn to use video as a source of information. , 2003, Developmental psychology.

[41]  V. Strasburger,et al.  Children, adolescents, and television. , 1992, Current problems in pediatrics.

[42]  Dimitri A. Christakis,et al.  Teacher in the Living Room? Educational Media for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers, A , 2005 .

[43]  J. Bryant,et al.  Psychology of entertainment , 2006 .

[44]  Daniel R. Anderson,et al.  Television and Very Young Children , 2005 .

[45]  V. Rideout,et al.  Media Family: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Their Parents, The , 2006 .

[46]  J. Piaget.  The construction of reality in the child , 1954 .

[47]  E. Lorch,et al.  The relationship of visual attention to children's comprehension of television. , 1979, Child development.

[48]  P. Tannenbaum.  The Entertainment Functions of Television , 1980 .

[49]  Georgene L. Troseth,et al.  Young children's use of video as a source of socially relevant information. , 2006, Child development.

[50]  M N Cheung,et al.  Detection of and recovery from errors in cardiac interbeat intervals. , 1981, Psychophysiology.

[51]  Jean Piaget,et al.  The child's conception of time; , 1969 .

[52]  J. Richards,et al.  Extended visual fixation in the early preschool years: look duration, heart rate changes, and attentional inertia. , 2000, Child development.

[53]  Daniel R. Anderson,et al.  Young children's attention to "Sesame Street." , 1976 .