Do Child Development Videos Fuel the Learning Process?
Whether or not videos for babies and toddlers actually increase a child’s learning potential has been a source of much debate among child development specialists. According to Walter Gilliam of Yale University, there haven’t been any credible studies that can tell parents about these videos’ positive impact on young children. “Although it is possible that these videos may be of some use for facilitating infant development, it is just as possible that they do nothing at all or are even detrimental,” he said. “Without credible data on their effectiveness, marketing these infant and toddler videos as ‘educational’ or ‘cognitively stimulating’ is misleading, at best.” Dr. Dorothy Singer, senior research scientist at Yale University, also questioned the value of these videos’ developmental content. “Very young children do not have the language capacity to tell us what they learned,” she said. “All we can say is that for some babies, the videos may be holding their attention on screen, but a
