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June 27, 2007Turn Off TV to Teach Toddlers New Words |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Toddlers learn their first words better from people than from Teletubbies, according to new research at Wake Forest University. Children younger than 22 months may be entertained, but they do not learn words from the television program, said Marina Krcmar, associate professor of communication at Wake Forest and author of the study. "With the tremendous success of programs such as 'Teletubbies' that target very young children, it has become important to understand what very young children are taking away from these programs," Krcmar said. In the study, Krcmar evaluated the ability of children ages 15 -- 24 months to learn new words when the words were presented as part of a "Teletubbies" program. "During the early stages of language acquisition, and for children who still have fewer than 50-word vocabularies, toddlers learn more from an adult speaker than they do from a program such as 'Teletubbies,'" Krcmar said. "We have known for years that children ages 3 and older can learn from programs like 'Sesame Street,'" Krcmar said. The results confirm the recommendation of the Academy of Pediatrics to avoid television for children under 2 years old. As part of the study, Krcmar also found that the children were just as attentive to an adult speaker on the small screen as they were to the Teletubbies characters. And, the children identified the target words more successfully in response to a video of an adult speaker than to the Teletubbies. "The idea that television can help teach young children their first words is a parent's dream, but one not supported by this research," she said.
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