This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Parents who want to give their infants a language boost probably should limit the time they expose their children to DVDs and videos such as "Baby Einstein" and "Brainy Baby."
Overuse of such productions may slow language development among babies who are 8 to 16 months old, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute.
For every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them. Baby DVDs and videos had no positive or negative effect on the vocabularies on toddlers 17 to 24 months old, according to the study published this month in the Journal of Pediatrics.
- Jennifer Barrett
