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No gains for toddlers who watch educational DVDs and TV shows, researchers say

Child Development
'Educational' TV programmes and DVDs that claim to aid children's social development and language skills have little benefit for children under two, claim experts.

Speaking at a conference in Boston, researchers from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said that there is no evidence to prove that ‘educational’ programmes help to develop language in children under the age of two.

For ‘educational’ programmes to be beneficial, children need to understand their content and pay attention to them, which children under two-years-old are less likely to be able to do.

Previous studies have shown that children older than two who watch ‘educational’ programmes demonstrate improved social and language skills and school readiness. This is because they have different levels of cognitive development and process information differently to younger children, they said.

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