kitchen table math, the sequel: baby videos

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

baby videos

Just came across this study - passing it along ---

Do Babies Learn From Baby Media?
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7 comments:

ChemProf said...

I'd be curious to see a study of baby sign versus spoken language. My daughter is speech delayed, and has definitely learned a lot of signs from her videos that we didn't teach her (as we had to rewatch it with her to figure out what she was signing -- baby signing is messy!) Spoken words, I'm not surprised they didn't learn from the videos.

January 18, 2011 at 4:07 PM
Debbie Stier said...

We had a Vivaldi CD (not DVD) when Ethan was born and there was a story told over the music, and he listened to it over and over and over -- at least once a day for at least 5 years -- and I swear to you it had a positive effect on the entire family.

First of all, Ethan (and possibly Daisy, I haven't checked), can recognize all Vivaldi from a note or two.

We all remember that story as if it was imprinted on our brains at birth (Ethan is reciting it to me, nearly verbatim, right now, 10-15 years later).

And most importantly, I believe that Ethan's love of music started there. I seriously believe that.

January 18, 2011 at 4:54 PM
TerriW said...

Ah, baby videos. I never cared if my kids were learning anything from them, I cared whether or not I could get dinner made while they were watching them.

January 18, 2011 at 5:22 PM
Luke Holzmann said...

Does not surprise me at all.

Does that mean that media isn't a good/fine thing? No. I think reading to kids, having picture books, listening to music, talking to them, playing are all very good things. But, as this study shows, if you plug them into something to try to teach for you... it's not going to be that effective.

Spend time with your children enjoying the wonder and amazing parts of learning together.

~Luke

January 19, 2011 at 7:20 AM
Anonymous said...

"I'd be curious to see a study of baby sign versus spoken language."

Could you elaborate a bit, please? What would you want studied?

I *think* that there is general belief/consensus that kids can learn to sign a bit earlier than they can learn to speak. I can dig into this if you like (studies among the Deaf community would probably be useful here). If this isn't what you care about for the study, what is your question or questions?

-Mark Roulo

P.S. My wife signs (badly, but much better than I do) and I've learned some sign language. We taught our child to sign at an early age (but he's forgotten most of it), so I've got a little bit of limited background here.

January 19, 2011 at 8:28 AM
ChemProf said...

Yes, there's a general consensus that kids can learn sign first. For most kids, it is just a little lag. For speech delayed kids, it can be a bigger difference. Looking at the study, I am pretty sure they were looking at kids knowing the word receptively, and I wouldn't be surprised if my daughter already knew the words receptively. But I know she learned expressive signs from the video -- because when she started signing fork, it didn't occur to me that she would have picked that one up, until I saw her signing with the videos a couple of days later. That's the difference I'm curious about.

January 21, 2011 at 6:36 PM
Jo Anne C said...

"I *think* that there is general belief/consensus that kids can learn to sign a bit earlier than they can learn to speak."

This was certainly true for our child.

The Baby Wise book by Ezzo gave simple signs to teach your child so they could communicate with you. We just kept repeating the signs and repeating the words out loud every day. I'll never forget the first day when my son sat up one morning in my bed and rubbed his tummy and looked at me - this was the sign for I am hungry, I was dumb founded, I had thought he would just end up talking first (he was taking what seemed to be a long time to get to this point).

So he hadn't learned to speak yet but he could make the signs for I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, and thank you. One evening my son had been very fussy, and I told my husband I couldn't figure out what he needed, so my son toddled over to the cabinet where I kept the teething tablets, and he pounded on the door of the cabinet with an open hand. This really surprised me, no sign had been taught for this, but he knew how to get his point across.

It was amazing to me how much a child is able to understand even before he is able to speak. They are able to understand simple questions and are able to shake their heads yes and no in response, and they can signal they are all done (eating). It really is satisfying when a child can finally communicate even on this limited basis.

January 21, 2011 at 8:44 PM

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