The Impact of Media Viewing on Infants ' and Toddlers ' Language Development: A Review
I. Introduction In today 's fast pace world, where approximately 6 billion people have access to a cell phone but only 4.5 billion have access to a working toilet (Wang, 2013) and the manufacturers of electronics constantly release the newest smart phone, computer and tablet technologies, it is easy to forget that just in 1984 only 8.2% of all American households owned a personal computer (Newburger, 2001). In 2000, 51% of households owned a personal computer and 41.5% had home internet access and the numbers are constantly rising (Newburger, 2001). In times of online education, e-books, internet television and the development of over 1000 mobile apps each day (Freierman, 2011), children are surrounded by modern technology from a very early age on. While the research on the effect of media consumption on infants and toddlers is still in its early stage, scientists have already formed opinions on whether this new pastime trend is promoting child development or not. This paper …show more content…
For this study, 384 infants age eight to 16 months, and 345 toddlers age 17 to 24 months, or more precise their parents, were chosen to participate (Zimmerman et al., 2007). The authors used the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) as well as the parents ' self-reports on viewing habits, duration of the latter, frequency of interaction with the children and other activities in order to assess the effect of media viewing on cognitive and vocabulary development. The indicators for language outcome were the number of words understood for infants and number of words spoken for toddlers (Zimmerman et al.,
I. Introduction In today 's fast pace world, where approximately 6 billion people have access to a cell phone but only 4.5 billion have access to a working toilet (Wang, 2013) and the manufacturers of electronics constantly release the newest smart phone, computer and tablet technologies, it is easy to forget that just in 1984 only 8.2% of all American households owned a personal computer (Newburger, 2001). In 2000, 51% of households owned a personal computer and 41.5% had home internet access and the numbers are constantly rising (Newburger, 2001). In times of online education, e-books, internet television and the development of over 1000 mobile apps each day (Freierman, 2011), children are surrounded by modern technology from a very early age on. While the research on the effect of media consumption on infants and toddlers is still in its early stage, scientists have already formed opinions on whether this new pastime trend is promoting child development or not. This paper …show more content…
For this study, 384 infants age eight to 16 months, and 345 toddlers age 17 to 24 months, or more precise their parents, were chosen to participate (Zimmerman et al., 2007). The authors used the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) as well as the parents ' self-reports on viewing habits, duration of the latter, frequency of interaction with the children and other activities in order to assess the effect of media viewing on cognitive and vocabulary development. The indicators for language outcome were the number of words understood for infants and number of words spoken for toddlers (Zimmerman et al.,