February 4, 2003
NASHVILLE, Tenn. –When a toddler sees herself on a home video, she may say “baby” or “girl” or think it is her sister on television. She knows she is here, in the real world – who is the child on the television?
While parents may think this scenario odd – doesn’t the child recognize herself? A Vanderbilt University study shows 2-year-olds have great difficulty using what they see on television to solve problems in the real world.
The study, “TV Guide: Two-Year-Old Children Learn to Use Video as a Source of Information,” appears in the most recent issue of Developmental Psychology.
“Adults frequently use television, such as 24-hour news or weather channels, for information and to guide our behavior, but we wondered if very young children also learn about the real world from television,” said Georgene Troseth, assistant professor of psychology and human development at the Peabody College of education and human development at Vanderbilt.
According to Troseth, much of what toddlers see on television may be going over their head – even in the case of educational television.
“Just because children are watching educational television does not mean they understand it. According to some studies, it helps to watch television with toddlers and talk them through the images they are viewing,” she said.
What Troseth’s research finds is that 2-year-olds do not appear to recognize the connection between a video image and reality.
So while an adult may change plans for the day after seeing a weathercaster on television standing in a downpour, 2-year-olds will not understand that the rain on television is the same rain as outside their window.
Research by Troseth and her colleague Sophia Pierroutsakos, assistant professor of psychology at Furman University, shows that 1-year-olds react to objects on television as though they are real. For example, they might reach for a bottle on television. At 2, Troseth’s research indicates, they discount television as a source of information about the real world. By the time they are 5, they are able to distinguish between video of real events, such as documentaries, and fictional television dramas. Researchers are not sure exactly when this transition from an inexperienced to sophisticated viewer occurs in young children.
In earlier studies, Troseth had 2-year-olds play “hide and seek” during which the toddlers watched on close-circuit television as a researcher hid a stuffed animal in another room. When the children were taken to the room, they usually could not find the toy. But 2-year-olds who watched the hiding of the toy directly through a TV-sized window between the rooms, always found the toy.
“My thought was that 2-year-olds base their response to video on their prior experience,” said Troseth. “If their only experience with video was with television, they learned to discount it as a source of information about the real world. After all, you can’t really pet the kitten on TV, and the speeding car on the screen isn’t coming through your living room.”
However, in Troseth’s current study, some 2-year-olds were given a new experience with video. Parents of the toddlers connected their video cameras to their family TV sets and children got to see themselves “live” on TV for two weeks. As the 2-year-olds played with toys, their siblings and family pets, the toddlers’ every action was reflected on the TV screen. The 2-year-olds with this live video experience were very successful at finding the hidden objects during the “hide and seek” exercise compared to the 2-year-olds whose only experience with video was regular television viewing.
In future research, Troseth hopes to explore whether experience with live video could help toddlers to learn more easily from educational television.
Two-year-olds responses to video information are just one component of the larger picture of Troseth’s research, which looks at children’s understanding of symbols.
Troseth has used video in her research because it is a symbol that represents reality – whether it is immediate reality such as newscasts, past reality such as a documentary or a television drama that looks like reality. She also chose video because it is a symbolic medium that is regularly used everyday.
“What my research shows is that symbols are not transparent to children. They have to learn how to use them,” Troseth said.
Media contact: Princine Lewis, 615-322-NEWS, princine.l.lewis@vanderbilt.edu