If you think your baby is "zoning out" in front of the television, think again.
Researchers at Tufts
University recently found that infants are influenced by emotional cues around them - even those coming from the television.
In the Tufts experiments, 12-month-olds watched a video of a woman reacting to various objects
(such as a blue ball and a yellow garden hose nozzle). The actress used facial
expressions and tone of voice to register positive, negative
or neutral reactions. Afterward,
when the babies were given the same objects to play with, they tended to avoid
objects that the woman had responded to negatively and were much more likely to
play with items that she had reacted to positively or neutrally.
"Children as young as 12 months make decisions based on the emotional reactions of adults around them. It turns out that they also use emotional
information they pick up from television," says Donna Mumme, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at the Tufts campus in Medford,
Massachusetts, and a coauthor of the study.
Notably, when the experiment was done on 10-month-olds, they were attentive to the video but did not appear to be influenced by the emotional cues. Next,
Mumme will test how this younger group might respond to live presentations. What does this mean for you and your baby? Mumme advises parents to think
twice before using harsh tones or exposing an infant to television programs that aren't for young children. Most important, tune in to the steady stream of emotional messages your baby gets from the world every day.
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