Can Past Experience with Television Help US Infants Learn From It?

Abstract

This study tested whether experience with television helped very young children in the US learn from it. Using a post-test only design, we attempted to teach children (6–24 months) novel words and a simple action either from a parent live, a parent on video, or a stranger on video. Children's past exposure to television was also measured. Babies who had a favorite television program imitated actions demonstrated by their mothers on television more frequently than infants without a favorite show. There was no association between experience with television and word learning. Lastly, only imitative learning and not word learning showed the curvilinear relationship to the age of the child predicted by the discounting hypothesis. Thus, some television experience does seem to aid in imitation, but not in word learning, and television experience is useful when babies imitate mothers on the screen but not when they attempt to imitate strangers.

Keywords:

• imitation
• infants
• television
• toddlers
• video
• word learning