As a parent, I know too well how television can be a very useful and welcome aid in temporarily entertaining my child, to give me some much needed time to get things done. In fact, my fancy mobile phone has also proved to be a useful distraction and cure for a whinging baby. Given this high exposure to technology, I have often wondered whether growing up with such high tech gadgets, such as ipods, ipads, smart phones, internet and television would impact on the development of my children…
Interestingly, I recently came across an article (Lillard & Peterson, 2011) which I thought had started to scientifically explore the impact of technology on neuropsychological function and development. Reading through this article, I am surprised to find that there have been quite a few studies investigating the impact that television has on a child’s functional and neurological development. We don’t need a research program to tell us that children generally tend to watch a great deal of television, however, it seems that the literature is telling us that it watching too much television at an early age has been associated with long-term executive function and attentional problems.
The authors argue that fast-paced shows (with the ‘pace’ of shows being defined by the amount of complete scene changes within a given time frame) seem to have a particularly negative impact on attention. These events or scenes, which are presented in rapid succession, capture attention in a bottom-up fashion involving the sensory rather than the prefrontal cortices. The authors maintain that the effort to encode the rapid sequence of events could deplete children’s executive function resources, including their attentional capacity. They therefore hypothesise that watching a fast paced program will have an immediate and negative impact on a child’s executive function, compared to watching a slower paced educational program, or a self paced activity such as drawing.
Given these hypotheses, Lillard and Peterson investigated the acute or immediate impact that a fast paced popular television show, in this case SpongeBob SquarePants, has on the executive function of 4 year old children. The viewing of SpongeBob, which is “a very popular fantastical cartoon about an animated sponge that lives under the sea”, lasted for 9 minutes, as did the viewing of a realistic cartoon about a boy, and the drawing activity. All child participants were randomly assigned to these groups. Immediately following this exposure, the children were assessed on a number of executive function tasks, assessing skills such as working memory, inhibitory control, and delayed gratification.
Interestingly, the authors found that there were no differences between the groups with regards to prior attentional problems and the amount of television watched at home (as reported by parents). Despite this, the group exposed to the fast paced SpongeBob episode performed significantly worse in executive function tasks post-exposure, than the drawing group. In addition, the difference between the face-paced and slow paced television program approached significance, with the fast-paced group again performing worse. This provides some evidence to suggest that watching a fast-paced television program can significantly impact a child’s EF processes and resources immediately following exposure. Importantly, the authors suggest that the pacing of the program may not be the only factor contributing to the depleted executive function and attentional resources. They also suggest that the “fantastical events”, or unexpected, unrealistic and novel situations and happenings within these shows may also play a major role. They argue that the encoding of fantastical events “is likely to be depleting of cognitive resources, as orienting responses are repeatedly engaged in response to novel events.”
Despite the number of limitations to this study, including a lack of a base-line executive function assessment, the assessment of 4 year olds only, the unknown and untested duration of these effects, and the limited understanding of the features of these fast paced shows that impact on executive function (fast pace, fantastical events, or something else entirely), this research raises many issues as a clinician. The first is the interesting impact that modern technology has on the neurological and functional development of children. This may result in re-assessing formulations we make, and may even prompt clinicians to start asking “how much television have you watched this morning?” before assessing each child.
As a parent, this research certainly gives me something to think about. Television may provide a temporary baby-sitter and some parental time out, although if future research acts to support these findings, maybe that short repose may not be worth the subsequent and immediate behavioural consequences.
We invite you all to read this article and comment, as we would love to hear your thoughts regarding these findings…
Frank and Linda
Reference:
Lillard, A.S. & Peterson, J. (2011). The immediate impact of different types of television on young children's executive function. Pediatrics, 128, 644-649.
