Baby Development Videos a Fraud

[WakataDreamer]

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug...-babyeinstein7 lol

[Marvo]

Studies like these don't really prove anything.

[dajo]

still pretty interesting. thanks

[Xaqaria]

I think that this is pretty intuitive. Anyone who thinks they can plop their infant down in front of a television to make them smarter is bound to have stupid children regardless, because they are obviously unattentive parents.

[Xei]

Junk statistics, junk inference.

[dajo]

well, but it has been shown in neurology that watching television at an early age is correlated with lesser educational success. and it can be explained as well. Recently there was this 30-year study published, I have a lecture on it, but it's in german - I'll try to find that study though. Anyway, children at a very young age watching television is bad for the development. And I agree, it makes sense if you think about it and how a child processes and learns information - the used neuropathways (at that age fundamental ones) are never going to change again, new ones are added 'on top', but what a child learned at that time is, neurologically speaking, permanent. And it is kind of obvious that a child should learn the basic things about our world by exploring, especially the outside, rather then from a flat representation of the world. No matter what's on the tube.

[Xei]

well, but it has been shown in neurology that watching television at an early age is correlated with lesser educational success. Which is to be expected considering parents who tend to show their children lots of television tend to be the parents who are too lazy or too busy to care for their child properly, which would clearly lead to lesser education success. Correlation doesn't prove causation, that's my point. There's no evidence here that TV is inherently bad.

[dajo]

Ok, that may be the case. But it's nevertheless not unreasonable to think that it could be true. I think that even with loving parents, a child at a very early age should not be subjected to television, even if it is designed for a 1-year-old.

[DuB]

Studies like these don't really prove anything. Correlation doesn't prove causation, that's my point. There's no evidence here that TV is inherently bad. The problems with correlational studies are well known, but there's no reason to dismiss them entirely. For the present example, there are rather obvious ethical problems with assigning large groups of infants to a treatment group which the researchers believe will permanently harm them. Correlational studies are the best that we can do in this case and many others. They do not allow strict causal inference, of course, but they are suggestive, and much good science would be thrown out the window if we simply wrote off every correlation.

[Koalaman]

well, but it has been shown in neurology that watching television at an early age is correlated with lesser educational success. and it can be explained as well. Recently there was this 30-year study published, I have a lecture on it, but it's in german - I'll try to find that study though. Anyway, children at a very young age watching television is bad for the development. And I agree, it makes sense if you think about it and how a child processes and learns information - the used neuropathways (at that age fundamental ones) are never going to change again, new ones are added 'on top', but what a child learned at that time is, neurologically speaking, permanent. And it is kind of obvious that a child should learn the basic things about our world by exploring, especially the outside, rather then from a flat representation of the world. No matter what's on the tube. Learning is not just about adding neuropathways 'on top' of each other. It's also about removing neuropathways. So I don't think that whatever you've learned whenever you were young is as permanent as you think it is, although I can't deny that there's probably some permanence to it, because not all "flawed" neuropathways can be removed and the development process is as its peak during childhood.

[dajo]

Hm, it is kind of how it works, granted it's a little simplified, but the more you use certain parts of the brain, the more they evolve. At first they are like dirt tracks, then they become small roads and finally highways. This has been shown by regularly conducted brain scans. But after a few years, another story is added and new dirt tracks are being 'walked in', but this happens on top of the pathways that have already been established and those you can not really change anymore, at least not a whole lot. Of course you can learn, but it's still on top of the things you have learned before. You can't change those fundamental ones, but you can add new ones. If I remeber correctly, a person develops approximately 8-9 stories on average in a lifetime, and the older a person gets, the further they are apart. (might be a different number) And just for reference, I was using the analogy that neurologist used, who I was talking about. If this is entirely wrong then please enlighten me (with a source), because I am of course not an expert. I'm going to watch that lecture again, if I have the time,.. because I really don't remember the scientific details.

[Marvo]

The problems with correlational studies are well known, but there's no reason to dismiss them entirely. For the present example, there are rather obvious ethical problems with assigning large groups of infants to a treatment group which the researchers believe will permanently harm them. Correlational studies are the best that we can do in this case and many others. They do not allow strict causal inference, of course, but they are suggestive, and much good science would be thrown out the window if we simply wrote off every correlation. This is true. The problem is that many people take studies like these for absolute proof, which is wrong. That's what I was getting at with my first post. Studies like these don't prove anything, though they create grounds for further research.