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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has recommended that children younger than 24 months of age not be exposed to television. Nevertheless, television programs and home videos are increasingly produced for very young children. This article reviews the extant research concerning television and very young children with respect to the AAP recommendation. More very young children are currently watching television than in the recent past; they pay substantial attention to TV programs and videos made for them. When learning from videos is assessed in comparison to equivalent live presentations, there is usually substantially less learning from videos. Although one study finds positive associations of language learning with exposure to some children’s TV programs, other studies find negative associations of viewing with language, cognitive, and attentional development. Background TV is also a disruptive influence. Evidence thus far indicates that the AAP recommendation is well taken, although considerably more research is needed.

This study investigated the hypothesis that background television affects interactions between parents and very young children. Fifty‐one 12‐, 24‐, and 36‐month‐old children, each accompanied by 1 parent, were observed for 1 hr of free play in a laboratory space resembling a family room. For half of the hour, an adult‐directed television program played in the background on a monaural television set. During the other half hour, the television was not on. Both the quantity and quality of parent–child interaction decreased in the presence of background television. These findings suggest one way in which early, chronic exposure to television may have a negative impact on development.

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This experiment tests the hypothesis that background, adult television is a disruptive influence on very young children's behavior. Fifty 12-, 24-, and 36-month-olds played with a variety of toys for 1 hr. For half of the hour, a game show played in the background on a monaural TV set. During the other half hour, the TV was off. The children looked at the TV for only a few seconds at a time and less than once per minute. Nevertheless, background TV significantly reduced toy play episode length as well as focused attention during play. Thus, background television disrupts very young children's play behavior even when they pay little overt attention to it. These findings have implications for subsequent cognitive development.

Researchers examined whether contingent experience using a touch screen increased toddlers' ability to learn a word from video. One hundred and sixteen children (24-36 months) watched an on-screen actress label an object: (a) without interacting, (b) with instructions to touch anywhere on the screen, or (c) with instructions to touch a specific spot (location of labeled object). The youngest children learned from contingent video in the absence of reciprocal interactions with a live social partner, but only when contingent video required specific responses that emphasized important information on the screen. Conversely, this condition appeared to disrupt learning by slightly older children who were otherwise able to learn words by passively viewing noninteractive video. Results are interpreted with respect to selective attention and encoding.

Prior research has identified negative effects of background television (TV) exposure on toddler toy play and parent-child interactions and has documented a negative association between early TV exposure and language development. It is hypothesized that background, adult-directed TV reduces the quantity and quality of parent language addressed to their young children. To test this hypothesis, the current study compared parent language directed at 12-, 24-, and 36-month-old toddlers (N ¼ 49) in the presence and absence of background TV. In the presence of background TV, the number of words and utterances spoken per minute by the parent decreased as did the number of new words per minute. However, mean length of utterances did not differ. Because parent input is an important factor for language acquisition, development may be negatively affected by background TV exposure. KEYWORDS infant; toddler; background television; language development; parent-child interaction; parent speech

Earlier research established that preschool children pay less attention to television that is sequentially or linguistically incomprehensible. This study determines the youngest age for which this effect can be found. One-hundred and three 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24-month-olds’ looking and heart rate were recorded while they watched Teletubbies, a television program designed for very young children. Comprehensibility was manipulated by either randomly ordering shots or reversing dialogue to become backward speech. Infants watched one normal segment and one distorted version of the same segment. Only 24-month-olds, and to some extent 18-month-olds, distinguished between normal and distorted video by looking for longer durations towards the normal stimuli. The results suggest that it may not be until the middle of the second year that children demonstrate the earliest beginnings of comprehension of video as it is currently produced.