'Vid Kids' Likely to Suffer Delayed Language Development

June 2, 2009— -- The more time your infant or toddler spends listening to the television, the less likely he is to hear your voice, or to speak himself, a new study asserts.

The findings strengthen a suspected link between infant TV exposure and delayed language development, according to a report in the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

This sets up an interesting paradox. While some researchers think audible TV is linked to decreased communication in young children, an entire market of educational DVDs geared toward babies has sprouted under the opposite theory that TV programs can help promote interaction between parent and child.

Whatever the connection, infants are spending an increased amount of time in front of the TV, according to a team led by Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at the University of Washington.

A 2003 report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that each day, 68 percent of American infants viewed some type of electronic medium: TV programming, DVDs or video tapes, computers or video games.

To determine the impact of infant TV watching, the Christakis group recruited parents who agreed to equip their 2- to 24-month-old kids with a wire for one day a month in order to record every sound for a 12- to 16-hour period.

Using noise-detection software that analyzed at least one recorded session from each of the 329 youngsters, files were sorted into sounds the kids heard and sounds the kids made.

The researchers used a statistical model to determine the association between audible television and the number of words spoken by each adult and each child. They also examined how many meaningful vocal interactions were shared by the child and adult while the TV was on.

They found that each hour spent with a TV was associated a significant reduction in a child's own attempts to talk.

Likewise, for each hour in front of the tube, the child heard 770 fewer words from an adult. That's 7 percent fewer than the average number of words a child hears in a household when the television is off.