Babies and Baby Media

Abstract

In the last decade, exposure to screen media has extended to ever earlier ages, as video products designed and marketed specifically for infants have proliferated and generated extraordinary sales. Parents purchase these products for multiple reasons, including the expectation that their infants will learn from them. We first summarize some of the data documenting this new phenomenon and then raise the question of what empirical research using video presentations tells us about the likelihood that infants will be able to learn from video. Although there has been remarkably few studies directly examining the extent to which infants learn from video displays, there is a substantial body of research in which video has been used to present various kinds of stimuli to infants and toddlers. We examine some of these studies with respect to what they can tell us about the potential visual media have to support learning early in life.