What has research shown to be the effects of infants watching media that is directed toward them?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Infants learn more readily from people than from TV, a finding known as the video deficit effect. For example, when 12- to 18-month-old infants watched a best-selling DVD that labels household objects, the infants learned very little from it compared with what they learned though interaction with parents. Recently, the video deficit effect has been relabeled as a transfer deficit because infants are less able to transfer what they see on the screen to their own behavior than to transfer what they learn in active interactions with adults. The transfer deficit is reduced somewhat for older infants when their memory capacities are taken into account that is, when content is repeated and verbal cues are added. When parents watch videos along with their infants and talk to them about the content, the infants spend more time looking at the screen, learn more from the media, and show greater knowledge of language as toddlers. However, it is not clear that parent co-viewing of media provides a better alternative to learning than parent-infant interaction by itself.
Infants learn from contingent interactions with others-and baby videos do not provide contingent stimulation. Infants can, however, can learn from screens when contingent interactions with people are involved. For example, 12- to 25-month-olds were presented with on-screen partners who taught novel words, actions, and patterns via real-time FaceTime conversations or pre-recorded video. All of the infants were attentive and responsive, but only children in the FaceTime group responded to the partner in a time-synchronized manner. One week later, the children in the FaceTime group preferred and recognized their partner, learned more novel patterns, and (among the older infants) learned more novel words. Although baby media will not transform babies into geniuses or even guarantee learning, babies can learn from real-time interactions with others-in person or on screen.