17 The Immediate Impact of Different Types of Television On Young Children's Executive Function
17 The Immediate Impact of Different Types of Television On Young Children's Executive Function
17 The Immediate Impact of Different Types of Television On Young Children's Executive Function
Executive Function
Angeline S. Lillard and Jennifer Peterson
Pediatrics 2011;128;644; originally published online September 12, 2011;
DOI: 10.1542/peds.2010-1919
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Preschool-aged children watch ⬎90 engaging in a self-paced activity such abilities,28 theoretically because it taps
minutes of television daily,1 and corre- as drawing. “hot” or emotional decision-making.29
lational studies link early television There is a limited amount of literature In this study, one-half of the subjects
viewing with deficits in executive func- on the immediate impact of television were tested by experimenters blind to
tion (EF),2–7 a collection of prefrontal8 show pacing on children’s attention or the subject’s study group. It is unusual
skills underlying goal-directed behav- other aspects of EF. One study found to use blind experimenters in basic
ior, including attention, working mem- that a fast-paced show led to less task cognitive development research, but
ory, inhibitory control, problem solv- persistence than a slow-paced one.22 we did so out of concern that exper-
ing, self-regulation, and delay of However, posttesting was conducted imenters might intuitively expect
gratification.9–12 EF is increasingly rec- in a large group setting in which the fast-paced television to influence
ognized as key to positive social13 and behavior of a few individuals might children’s performance. Studies of
cognitive 14 functioning and is strongly have affected others. Another study the impact of pretend play, generally
associated with success in school.15–17 suggested fast pacing is not problem- presumed to be positive,30,31 on chil-
atic: watching fast- versus slow-paced dren’s cognitive functioning show ex-
If television has long-term effects on
episodes of Sesame Street had no im- perimenter bias influences results in
EF, then one might see small short-
pact on task persistence or impulsivity that domain: when experimenters
term effects; even adults report feeling
in later free play.23 It should be noted were blinded, positive results went
less alert immediately after watching
that Sesame Street is even faster- away.32–34 As a precaution and to exam-
television.18 Most research on televi- paced today than it was 30 years ago24 ine whether blind experimenters are
sion has focused on attention, one when that study was conducted; it is important in this domain, we tested
of many EF processes. Entertainment possible that even the fast-paced clip one-half of the children with a blind ex-
television is particularly associated created for the 1977 study was not as perimenter and compared results un-
with long-term attention problems19; fast-paced as today’s television shows. der the 2 conditions.
thus, its viewing might be most likely to
Task persistence is only one outcome
have negative short-term impacts. METHODS
of high EF. Young children’s EF has
Within the realm of entertainment tele- been assessed by many tasks tapping Sixty 4-year-olds (Table 1) were re-
vision, fast-paced shows seem particu- its various aspects. Performance on cruited from a database of families
larly likely to have a negative impact on these tasks is often found to be inter- willing to participate in research. Most
attention, one reason for this being correlated,14,25 and it is also correlated of the children were white and from
that rapidly presented events capture with parent and teacher assessments middle- to upper-middle-class fami-
attention in a bottom-up fashion, in- of children’s self-regulated behav- lies. Parents were telephoned and told
volving the sensory rather than pre- ior.26,27 EF was assessed here by using about the study; willing parents made
frontal cortices.20 Thus, fast-paced 4 well-known tasks: Tower of Hanoi, an appointment to come to the labora-
television would do nothing to train in- backward digit span, delay of gratifica- tory, where the study was described
ternally controlled (prefrontal) atten- tion, and head toes knees shoulders again, and parents signed a consent
tion over the long-term. In the short- (HTKS). Although delay of gratification form approved by the University of Vir-
term, the effort to encode rapidly is considered a measure of EF, espe- ginia institutional review board.
presented events could tax children’s cially of inhibitory control, it tends to Children were randomly assigned (by
executive resources. When adults are be less well correlated with the other the experimenter drawing a number
presented with televised events in
more rapid succession, more re-
sources are allocated to encoding TABLE 1 Study Factors According to Intervention Experience
those events,21 presumably depleting Characteristic Fast-Paced Television Educational Television Drawing
resources that could otherwise be Mean (SD) age, y 55.10 (3.61) 54.84 (3.72) 53.95 (3.66)
Boys, n (of 20) 12 10 10
available for other aspects of atten-
Attention baseline, mean (SD)a 1.83 (2.31) 2.16 (1.57) 2.00 (1.75)
tion. Thus, we hypothesized that watch- Television time, mean (SD), min/wk 338 (66.73) 278 (66.72) 381 (66.73)
ing a fast-paced cartoon would have an Tower of Hanoi, mean (SD) 0.15 (0.37) 0.35 (0.49) 0.70 (0.47)
HTKS, mean (SD) 19.70 (13.29) 33.20 (28.02) 30.58 (17.71)
immediate negative impact on chil- Delay of gratification, mean (SD) 146.15 (151.29) 257.20 (132.16) 242.00 (142.10)
dren’s EF relative to watching a slower- Backward digit span, mean (SD) 3.85 (2.58) 4.21 (3.19) 3.90 (4.11)
paced, realistic educational cartoon or a Assessed by using a scale of 1 to 10 (10 indicates more attention problems).
DISCUSSION
This study provides empirical evidence
that watching a 9-minute episode of a
fast-paced television cartoon immedi-
ately impaired young children’s EF rel-
ative to watching an educational televi-
sion show or drawing. Children in the
FIGURE 1
z scores for each task. fast-paced television group scored sig-
nificantly worse than the others de-
spite being equal in attention at the
Difficulties Questionnaire (P ⫽ .88). did significantly worse on the EF outset, as indicated by parent report.
There were also no group differences composite than the drawing group (P This result is consistent with others
in the amount of television children ⫽ .004). The difference between the showing long-term negative associa-
watched per week (P ⫽ .55), with the fast-paced and the educational tele- tions between entertainment televi-
range being 278 (educational televi- vision groups approached signifi- sion and attention.19 Given the popular-
sion) to 381 (drawing) minutes per cance (P ⫽ .05) (Fig 1), and there was ity of some fast-paced television
week. no difference between educational cartoons among young children, it is
Cronbach’s ␣ for 3 of the EF tasks television and drawing. A regression important that parents are alert to the
(Tower of Hanoi, backward digit span, analysis was performed entering the possibility of lower levels of EF in young
and HTKS) was 0.69 but dropped to 0.51 amount of television watched per children at least immediately after
when delay of gratification was in- week, attention problems, and child’s watching such shows.
cluded. Therefore, z scores for the first age at the first step, and intervention In addition to the pacing, we speculate
3 EF tasks were summed for a compos- condition at the second step, setting that the onslaught of fantastical events
ite EF score, and delay of gratification the drawing and educational television that was also present in the fast-paced
was analyzed separately. conditions as baseline. The first 3 vari- show might have further exacerbated
A first analysis of covariance assess- ables made no significant contribution EF. Whereas familiar events are en-
ment examining whether experi- to the EF composite score but condi- coded by established neural cir-
menter blindness influenced results in tion did (P ⫽ .03). cuitry,40 there is no such circuitry for
any condition, controlling for chil- Delay of gratification was analyzed new and unexpected events, which fan-
dren’s age, revealed that blindness separately and showed similar re- tastical events often are. Encoding new
had no influence on condition scores sults, with a significant main effect of events is likely to be particularly de-
(P ⫽ .83 for composite EF and .62 for intervention condition on the number pleting of cognitive resources, as ori-
delay of gratification). Thus, we are of seconds waited (P ⫽ .03, p2 ⫽ .12), enting responses are repeatedly en-
confident that experimenter bias did and posthoc analyses revealed that gaged in response to novel events.41
not influence results for those sub- the fast-paced television group waited Because cognitive depletion taxes self-
jects whose assessments were not run significantly less long than either the regulation,42,43 we hypothesize that the
blind. drawing group (P ⫽ .03) or the educa- fantastical aspect of the fast-paced
Combining across these groups and tional television group (P ⫽ .02), which show could also be partly responsible
using age as a covariate, there was a did not differ from each other. Another for the EF effects seen here. This hy-
significant main effect of intervention regression analysis was performed pothesis will be tested in further
on the composite EF score (P ⫽ .01, entering the amount of television research.
p2 ⫽ .15). Posthoc analyses revealed watched per week, attention prob- This study has several limitations.
that the fast-paced television group lems, and child’s age at the first step First, we cannot tell exactly what fea-
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