Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatric researcher at Children's Hospital in Seattle, recently conducted a study on the effects of television on young children. He found that children between the ages of 1 and 3 who watch an hour of TV per day are 10% more likely to develop attention problems by the time they're 7-years-old.

"Children's programmers use a technique called the 'orienting reflex', known as OR, to capture and keep a child's attention. OR works this way: If we see or hear something the brain doesn't recognize as the correct sequence or a typical life event - such as a dancing alphabet or quick zooms and pans, we focus on it until the brain recognizes that it doesn't pose a threat. The problem with watching too many programs that rely on OR is that real life becomes slow and boring by comparison."

Continued exposure to this type of input conditions causes the mind to expect it all the time. When a child's mind has been conditioned in this way, but doesn't receive the high-intensity input, the child becomes bored and inattentive. Read more at MSNBC.MNS.com.

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Labels: research, studies, tv_watching

Posted By: Aspen Education Group