Can Babies Learn from Ms. Rachel and Other Baby TV Shows?

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/

Rachel Griffin Accurso, a preschool teacher and mother based in New York City, gained widespread recognition through her YouTube channel, “Songs for Littles – Toddler Learning Videos.” With over 2.6 million subscribers and hundreds of millions of views, her channel focuses on aiding language development in babies and toddlers. Rachel, supported by her husband, a Broadway composer, started the channel because her son struggled with delayed speech, motivating her to fill a gap she saw in children’s programming aimed at language development.

Rachel Griffin Accurso’s YouTube channel and website, “Songs for Littles – Toddler Learning Videos,” focus on helping children learn essential skills like talking, letters, numbers, colors, and animal sounds. She collaborates with speech language pathologists to integrate speech practice techniques into her videos, aiming to aid toddlers’ language development. Other popular YouTube channels like Little Baby Bum, Super Simple Songs, and Hey Sensory Bear also emphasize educational content for babies and toddlers, supporting cognitive development and using engaging visuals tailored to young children’s developmental stages.

Research on Ms. Rachel’s YouTube channel and similar baby shows is currently lacking, as academic studies often lag behind popular media trends. However, there exists extensive research on “baby media,” particularly referencing the Baby Einstein DVD series from the 1990s and early 2000s. Like Ms. Rachel’s channel, Baby Einstein was founded by a mother and teacher aiming to enhance infant and toddler development through music, slow-paced content, object labeling, sign language, and puppets. Both claim educational benefits supported by parental testimonials. Baby Einstein achieved widespread popularity, with a significant number of American families owning its DVDs, as reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2003.

In 2007, a research study suggested that exposure to “baby media” like Baby Einstein might have negative effects on infant language development. The study found that for every hour infants aged 8 to 16 months spent watching such media, they knew 6 to 8 fewer words. This effect was significant, correlating each hour of viewing with a 17-point decrease in language scores, contrasting with reading to children daily, which was associated with a 7-point increase. However, this study was correlational, and a recent reanalysis of its data has raised doubts about the accuracy of these findings.

Experimental studies investigated the impact of Baby Einstein’s “Baby Wordsworth” DVD on infants’ language learning. Infants aged 12 to 15 months watched the video 15 times over 6 weeks, but researchers found no significant difference in language learning between those who watched the video and those who did not. A follow-up study with children aged 12 to 25 months also showed no evidence of learning from the video, regardless of age. Additionally, correlational findings suggested that starting Baby Einstein videos at an earlier age was associated with lower overall language scores, though causation was not established.

A study compared learning outcomes from Baby Einstein videos versus live interactions with parents in 12- to 18-month-old children. Infants watched the videos either alone, with a parent, or had parents teach the words from the video during normal interactions. Results showed that children did not learn any words from the videos, regardless of the condition.

However, children did learn words when parents actively taught them during regular interactions. Interestingly, parents’ beliefs about their children’s learning were influenced by their liking of the videos rather than actual learning outcomes. The Walt Disney company, which acquired Baby Einstein, faced scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission in 2006 and removed the word “educational” from their marketing. They subsequently offered refunds for videos purchased between 2004 and 2009, which many parents interpreted as an acknowledgment that the videos were not educational for babies.

Research consistently shows that infants and toddlers have difficulty learning from video compared to real-life interactions, known as the “video deficit.” This deficit persists until about age 3 and gradually diminishes with age. Studies demonstrate that infants as young as 9 months old fail to learn foreign languages from video or audio recordings but can learn from live speakers.

The video deficit extends beyond language learning to other types of learning tasks; for example, toddlers struggle to locate hidden objects shown in videos but succeed when observing the task in real life. Even when videos are designed to engage children with responsive cues like using their name or pausing for attention, children under 36 months show no significant learning of new words from videos alone.

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