When playtime is affected by background TV

If you've dipped into my book, Into the Minds of Babes, you know that chapter 4 drills down to look at the impact of background media, focusing mostly on TV but also weaving in some research on how infants learn language when they are having to filter out background noise of all kinds. I've also blogged about background TV for On Parenting on WashingtonPost.com.

Last week, the journal Child Development published a report on one of the studies I saw in action in Amherst, Mass. The crux of the report, written by Marie Evans Schmidt and colleagues, is that toddlers bop from one toy to another when they are playing in a room with a television showing Jeopardy. When the TV isn't on, their play is more focused and less distracted.

I've argued that background TV hasn't gotten enough attention in the general media compared to the heated dialogue on baby videos. But with this report finally out in official, peer-reviewed form, maybe we'll start to see more stories on the subject. Tara Parker-Pope of The New York Times wrote about it last week on Well, which, by the way, is one well-written blog on health and wellness, as did Reuters UK and USA Today. (And many thanks to Rae Pica, for excerpting some of my writing in her report on the study.)