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Now in stores
Into the Minds of Babes
A book about electronic media and very young children
Published in September 2007 by Basic Books
Click here to order from Amazon.com
Debates are raging about videos that are aimed at babies, toddlers and preschoolers, but what do scientists really know about their impact? To learn more, I visited infant- perception laboratories, child development centers and social-science conferences around the country. I interviewed industry leaders at Noggin, Disney, Nickelodeon, Sesame Workshop and PBS. And I visited with several families in their living rooms and interviewed scores more. Much of what I found flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
Research has shown me that edicts about how to use television and computers around children cannot be black and white. It is not enough to simply say, “Turn it off.” Turn off what? When? Why? At exactly what age? To set reasonable limits, parents want answers. They want to know if there is any real scientific basis to alarms about the harm of television. They want to go beyond headlines about attention deficit disorders, learn at what age language skills can be learned from video and software, and understand what exactly is “educational” about educational TV. My hope is that this book will help them get there.