In one of Alanna Mitchell’s Atkinson Series articles for The Star, she discusses seven brain myths. One of these myths is: “The more you enrich a baby's environment, the smarter the baby."

According to Dr. Dimitri Christaki, a researcher at the University of Washington, "There is an assumption that stimulation is good, so more is better…But that's not true; there is such a thing as overstimulation."

The idea that overstimulation is good comes from a:

"misreading of the famous "enriched rats" experiment. The rats were divided into two groups: some in a complex social environment and some isolated in a simple environment. The enriched rats were able to learn better than the isolated rats. That has led over-eager parents and others to insist that infants ought to be stimulated as much as possible so they build better brains. Commercial enterprises have cashed in on this as a result. Actually, over-stimulating babies has the opposite effect; the children shut down and don't learn. The real finding of the rat study was that deprivation – intellectual, social and environmental – is bad for baby mammals. The so-called "enriched" environment was not really enriched at all. It was akin to what a rat living in the wild would normally encounter. The lesson for parents is not to isolate babies but to expose them to normal life – talk with them, let them play with other children and encourage them to explore on their own."

– Alanna Mitchell, Toronto Star, Oct. 31 2009

You may have heard or read about how the Walt Disney Company is offering refunds for Baby Einstein DVD's. For years, parents and education groups were fighting claims made by the company that their videos would improve their kids cognitive abilities. Over time, the product ceased to be marketed as "educational". For the full backstory read here.

A study conducted by the Children's Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School has shown that there is "no evidence of cognitive benefit from watching TV during the first two years of life". Other studies, such as the one led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Christakis, have found that products like Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby "may be doing more harm than good. And they may actually delay language development in toddlers". They found that "with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos”. Other studies found that if you take environmental factors such as how much interaction a parent has with their child or socioeconomic status, there is no real link between watching television before age two and cognitive abilities and motor-skills.  

Whether or not television watching is indeed harmful for toddlers, is still disputed. What seems to be agreed upon is that kids under the age of two don't get any real benefit from watching television.

What does the Baby Einstein Company think of these findings?

The Baby Einstein Company is aware of the ongoing discussions regarding children and television viewing, particularly as it pertains to infants under the age of two years old. And, while we respect the American Academy of Pediatrics, we do not believe that their recommendation of no television for children under the age of two reflects the reality of today’s parents, families and households – for example, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 68% of all babies under two years old watch screen media on any given day. The Baby Einstein Company believes that when used properly, developmentally-appropriate video content can be a useful tool for parents and little ones to enjoy together.

One of the main reasons often cited by parents for using baby videos is to get a chance to get things done around the house. It occupies the kids.

Baby Einstein have no scientific basis for their past claims that they can help educate. "As far as Christakis and his colleagues can determine, the only thing that baby videos are doing is producing a generation of overstimulated kids...His group has found that the more television children watch, the shorter their attention spans later in life."

Kids learn faster when they interact with their parent or caregiver directly. "Previous studies have shown, for example, that babies learn faster and better from a native speaker of a language when they are interacting with that speaker instead of watching the same speaker talk on a video screen."

While looking at the trends in comments to articles on Baby Einstein, I found that many people seem to think that if a parent believes and relies on a DVD to improve their kid's cognitive skills, that they really should have thought about their choice in having a baby beforehand. I find this interesting because while it may seem like common sense to not rely on the tube to teach your kids vocabulary words, we still needed scientific research to create changes.

In tonight's interview with Alanna Mitchell, she discuss the importance of applying neuroscientific findings on how best we learn to our education system.

Should scientific findings be applied to our teaching system? Or do scientists have no place in educationland? What do you think?