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Reuters, 3/6/06
TV MAY NOT CAUSE KIDS' ATTENTION DISORDERS: STUDY
by Michael Conlon
CHICAGO -- In contrast to an earlier finding, it does not appear
children who watch a lot of television wind up with behavior
problems in school, researchers reported on Monday.
If there is an association, it may be that the exhausted parents of
already overly active children are more likely to let them watch TV
to give themselves a break, and not that TV itself leads to
attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, the report from
Texas Tech University in Lubbock said.
The findings were based on an evaluation of data from a survey of
parents and teachers of 5,000 U.S. children over a two-year period,
to determine if TV viewing habits during the kindergarten year
resulted in ADHD in first grade.
"The results of the present study do not indicate the presence of an
important relationship between television exposure and subsequent
attention problems," said the study published in the March issue of
Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
That finding conflicts with the conclusion of a 2004 study in the
same journal, possibly because of differences in methodology, the
authors said.
The earlier study, which used a different database, found each hour
of TV watched during ages 1 to 3 increased the risk of attention
problems by 10 percent at age 7.
But the new study pointed out that "... ADHD, although identified by
other names, has been recognized as a disorder of childhood well
before children had television to watch."
Earlier studies have found no support for the idea that parenting
causes the disorder, although environmental factors around the time
of birth have been linked in some studies, as has exposure to
environmental toxins, it added.
"Researchers have learned that much of child development is
reciprocal, with characteristics of a child influencing the way that
child is parented in addition to parenting influencing
characteristics of a child," the study said.
"It may be that exhausted parents of very active and inattentive
children resort to using the television as a 'babysitter' more
commonly than do parents of less active and more attentive
children," it said.
"Thus, the relationship between early television viewing and later
attention problems may be linked to child temperament as much as or
more than television causing children to be inattentive" it
concluded.
Copyright Reuters 2006
---------------------------------
New York Times, 3/7/06
THE CLAIM: TV SHORTENS CHILDREN'S ATTENTION SPANS
by Anahad O'Connor
THE FACTS: For about as long as television has been around, people
have speculated that too much exposure to it can harm children's
brains.
So it was perhaps no surprise when a large study two years ago found
that children who watched the most television also had the shortest
attention spans. In some cases, all it took was an extra hour of
television viewing a day to increase the odds of developing
concentration problems by 10 percent, the researchers found.
But parents who cringed at those findings can breathe a little
easier.
In the last two years, two other studies have failed to find any
link between television exposure and symptoms of attention-deficit
disorder. The most recent, published this month in the journal
Pediatrics, based its findings on a group of 5,000 American
kindergartners who were followed for two years.
The researchers found that children who watched the most television
were no more likely to develop attention problems than those who
watched the least television. The other study,
in the Netherlands, also found no relationship. But
researchers say more study is needed.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The link between exposure to television and
decreased attention spans in children may not be as strong as once
thought.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company |
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