The idea is already quite old. Neil Postman already argued against Sesame Street, discussing the fast pace of that show which would make school look dumb. Recently Manfred Spitzer discussed in his book on Digital Dementia (sic) the idea that media is killing the concentration of our children. A study by Dr Alexandra Lamont, Dr Sarah Rose and Dr Nicholas Reyland presented last Friday at the British Psychological Society’s Developmental Psychology Section annual conference in Amsterdam shows that watching fast-paced television programs does not adversely affect young children’s ability to concentrate.
As there is no paper published yet, we’ll have to do with the press release, but it’s certainly one to monitor:
Dr Lamont, lead author of the study explained: “There is a widely held belief that television watching in young children is responsible for behavioural problems, attention deficits, and developmental challenges, but there is little research that has addressed this to date for young audiences.”
In the current study 41 three and four year old children watched a slow and a fast paced version of Postman Pat before completing a block building task and tests of programme comprehension.
Children paid more attention to the fast paced programme, and although younger children seemed to pay less attention and put less effort in to the block building task after watching the fast paced programme, all the children performed slightly better on this task after watching this programme. There was no difference in their comprehension of the two programmes.
Dr Lamont said: “We know that the pace of children’s television has rapidly increased in recent years. It’s reassuring to discover that fast-paced programmes have no detrimental effects on young children’s behaviour in the short term, and important to know that they sustain children’s attention and may even give them a slight boost in ability to undertake other tasks. In this very complex area there are clearly still more questions to answer, but we are providing some evidence to counter the supposed ‘harm’ that comes from the increasing pace of technology for young children.”
And? How many children were involved? You need a large study to be in any way conclusive and all factors need to be taken into account too. How exactly was Post Man Pat speed up? (e.g. were these two different episodes or the same one altered?) Was the difference between the two groups significant or not? Was the decrease in time spent doing the building block task significant? Did it take into account the fact that children learn in different ways and many won’t necessarily do well with blocks and others will and an average means nothing.
A new study, especially one that hasn’t been published, is certainly not something I would take at face value.