August 14, 2007

Disney Throws Tantrum Over University Study Debunking Baby DVD's and Videos

The Walt Disney Company has asked the University of Washington to retract statements criticizing the company’s Baby Einstein products, The Denver Post reported today. University researchers wrote last week in the The Journal of Pediatrics that infants who watched DVD’s and videos designed for babies understood fewer words than did infants who didn’t watch the recorded programs.

A university news release announced the study’s findings by stating that, “despite marketing claims, parents who want to give their infants a boost in learning language probably should limit the amount of time they expose their children to DVD’s and videos such as ‘Baby Einstein’ and ‘Brainy Baby.’”

The release also quoted Frederick Zimmerman, the study’s leader and an associate professor of health services, as saying that “the most important fact to come from this study is there is no clear evidence of a benefit coming from baby DVD’s and videos and there is some suggestion of harm.”

In a letter to the university’s president, Mark A. Emmert, which was made available on the Post’s Web site, Disney said the study was flawed and did not specifically assess Baby Einstein products. —Richard Monastersky

Comments

1. I’m a reader who often cites the Chronicle for good journalistic practices. Your headline for this article, while undeniably cute, is unfortunate. From the article, it seems to me the Disney Corp. behaved appropriately when criticizing the study. The use of the word “tantrum” misrepresents their response.

   — John Hachtel    Aug 14, 03:41 PM    #

2. I completely agree with John Hachtel. It’s ironic that the Chronicle’s distorted headline is attached to a story in which a university’s public affairs office (and possibly the researchers, themselves) went well beyond the data in their conclusions.

   — lk    Aug 14, 04:06 PM    #

3. I’m guessing John and lk work for Disney. While the criticisms in the Disney letter may well have validity, the bluster and threatening tone of the Disney letter make “tantrum” an apt description of the letter in my opinion. In any event the useful link to the letter itself allows us all to read it and draw our own conclusions.

   — Bob Zielinski    Aug 14, 04:17 PM    #

4. The word “tantrum” pretty much sums up Disney’s response. Talk about the “little mouse that roared,” well here it is.

   — ML    Aug 14, 04:33 PM    #

5. The AMA has recommend little to no TV exposure for children under the age of two for several years now. It is not new research that children acquire language through human interaction, no interaction with a television set.

   — Dawn Simpson    Aug 14, 04:35 PM    #

6. I have little fondness for Disney, but I do have a 2 year old who appears to me to have learned a great deal of vocabulary from Baby Einstein, which is a product in very sharp contrast to most of the other material aimed at babies. If indeed the press release singles out this product when the research does not so differentiate it, then Disney – I hate to say it – have a point, and the university PR staff may have done the research a great disservice by trying to get media attention

   — Nicholas Williams    Aug 14, 04:53 PM    #

7. Nicholas, two year olds are not infants. Your child is older than the infants who were the focus of this study.

   — Craig Hayward    Aug 14, 05:24 PM    #

8. I am a retired college dean, not a Disney employee. I support Disney’s response to the university’s publicity and find no fault with it. I think that the use of the word, tantrum, in the headline was unfortunate.

   — robert ullrich    Aug 14, 05:25 PM    #

9. John and lk—don’t confuse the Chronicle’s primary publication with the New Blog. Key word: blog. This is section doesn’t have the same level of editorial standards, nor should it—it serves a different purpose.

   By the way, I think “tantrum” was a great choice of words, illustrating what happened and tying in with the piece’s infant-oriented content, but that’s not my major point…

   — dpc    Aug 14, 05:28 PM    #

10. Disney is walking a fine line by marketing Baby Einstein products and at the same time, stating on the Baby Einstein website that “the products are not designed to make babies smarter.” That said, I agree that the press release should have chosen its words more carefully and avoided reference to any particular product.

    — CE    Aug 14, 05:52 PM    #

11. um, yes, Craig but how can you judge what effect an educational aid has had on an infant until they start talking properly? He started watching Baby Einstein when he was an infant, and since his speech is well ahead of average development and since I watched him interact positively with the product (which was watched in moderation) it is my own personal observation that it did much more good than harm

    — Nicholas Williams    Aug 14, 06:14 PM    #

12. Isn’t every baby the “sweetest most scrunchiest, most cutest, most smartest snuggly muffin in all the world?” Why would you need a video to improve on that?

    — marci    Aug 14, 06:25 PM    #

13. Marci….to make millions and millions of dollars of course! Hey, it doesn’t matter if the product works or not. What matters is if consumers “think” it works. That’s where marketing comes in. Studies to the contrary must be squashed at all costs. Damn the data! Screw the study! We want profit, damn it! As for the reactions of some above to one word in the article title, lighten up, Francis. Is it just me, or do the Disney clones above sound automatronic.

    — paleotn    Aug 14, 09:43 PM    #

14. My infant enjoys interacting with people and exploring her surroundings. This is how infants learn body and verbal languages. Instead of watching a TV screen, interact with your child and teach him or her the basic elements of our human culture. For example, numbers, colors, and the alphabet. As of this moment, my infant is looking at me craving interaction and attention. Time for another language lesson!

    — Ray    Aug 15, 06:33 AM    #

15. Disney’s point is valid. It seems that the press release was irresponsible, and not consistent with the study. UW should retract and restate immediately. And, no, I don’t work for Disney.

    — D Himes    Aug 15, 07:59 AM    #

16. The provocative title certainly got my attention – as an anti-TV, anti-Disney parent, I looked forward to sneering at the evil corporate giant laid low by science. Much to my chagrin, as a cognitive psychologist I found myself agreeing with the Disney team. The university’s press release ignores the study authors’ caveats and goes well beyond the data to make unsupported conclusions. This type of irresponsible misrepresentation has become all too common. Scientists are muzzled while the PR department runs wild with their data.

    — karen    Aug 15, 08:45 AM    #

17. How many of us would have ever heard of this study if not for the press release? As a parent who relied heavily on the Baby Einstein videos to find time to snatch a quick shower or fix a couple of bottles, of course I felt a twinge of guilt or two after reading about the study. But would I have done anything differently? No way. Infants undeniably are enthralled by these simple little productions and they are great to have in the parental toolkit. The only thing that truly upsets me is I did not come up with idea first.

    — John    Aug 15, 09:14 AM    #

18. We never used “Baby Einstein”, so I can’t comment on that specific product (though it seems the study can’t, either.) We did however, use a “Muzzy” German language video, and to this day my daughter-she was 2, now she’s 9- has a basic German vocabulary -knowing certain german words and their meanings-far in advance of any of her cousins. (And we don’t speak German, so the video is the only place she picked it up from-far faster than I did.) She didn’t learn to actually speak the language- didn’t stick with it long enough to be fair; only weeks, really- but the learning of vocabulary was certainly there. There are SO many variables in children learning vocabulary- education of the parents,number of siblings, type of daycare.whether they’re read to, etc., that it’s obvious this study was flawed. I don’t like Disney stuff myself- they’re the “evil empire” in my house – due to copyright, artistic and cultural issues- but they’re correct here.

    — RM    Aug 15, 09:19 AM    #

19. If you read the study, it shows a negative association between video viewing and development in infants between the ages of 6 and 16 months. This is not a particularly surprising result. Comment #14 by Ray reflects the fact that babies (like us) are social creatures and use social cues as part of their development.

    Nicholas Williams’s observations might be true but they are basically anecdotal. There’s no way of knowing whether his child’s development was affected negatively, positively or not at all by viewing the videos.

    — Sam Wang    Aug 15, 09:33 AM    #

20. Several comments on this article raise the question of anecdotal evidence, which is what they offer. I haven’t read the study, and won’t comment on it, but saying “it worked for me, so it must be ok” just doesn’t work for me.

    I hope the study in question used a rigourous protocol to examine the effects or lack or effects of these videos.

    — Arthur Kaye    Aug 15, 10:08 AM    #

21. Paleotn – ease up. No corporation with the high profile of Disney can last long by ignoring research—and they know it. Quality product that does what it is supposed to do makes for “long-term, sustainable profitability,” which is the goal of all decent (I won’t use the term “good”) companies. Most major corporations are not Enron, any more than most researchers are Ward Churchill.

    — Bryan    Aug 15, 10:13 AM    #

22. I know precious little about any of this, being neither a parent nor a child psychologist. I do see friends using these DVD’s to varying degrees, and I wonder whether those who use them a lot aren’t training their youn’uns to be socially passive. If your primary socialization is with a machine, it’s not going to be very interactive, which is the soul of language, isn’t it?

    — Bible Spice    Aug 15, 11:19 AM    #

23. I am a resarcher at the UW and I have ambiguous feelings about Disney, but I must admit that Disney has a valid point. It seems to me that as much as Disney has a desire for profit (which I have no problem with, as I am in the business school) the researchers seem to have an anti-tv agenda. There may be no benefit from these kinds of videos, but this study was full of flaws. I don’t know about the Journal of Pediatrics, but none of our journals would have let this kind of research in. And what was worse was the press release. Universities are trying more and more to mount PR campaigns around research that that they produce. Again I see nothing wrong with that, but either the university or the researchers put a bunch of “lipstick on a pig” to make this resarch sound like it found something that was striking and clearly supported, which it did not. There is a lot of important research that is done that never gets any press, and it’s a shame that poorly done research gets the bright lights shown on it. This hurts all of us who strive to do good research and never go on TV to try to get our 15 minutes.

    — Jeff    Aug 15, 11:32 AM    #

24. Bryan – In many circumstances, you are correct. In this particular case, what matters is not true quality, but the perception of quality. We’re not talking lawn mowers here, where quality, measured in how well a product performs the task for which it was designed, is easy to observe individually. Outside of a controlled environment, the true efficacy of the Disney product in question is extremely hard to measure with respect to individual children. Even if there’s evidence it does work, within controlled circumstances the efficacy of a product like this will vary significantly between children. That said, buying decisions of this type are based mostly on the perceived stature of the company, anecdotal claims and “buzz”. Anything like the study mentioned must be squashed as quickly as possible, aided by those parents who for whatever reason “think” the product worked for their particular child. It’s in the company’s best interest to do so. This is a prime example of “snake oil .”

    I do wish the study detractors above would be SPECIFIC in their criticisms, instead of just saying they’ve never worked for Disney, are the Grand Poobaa of Snuffaluffacus, and have 12 Ph.D.s in ExtraordinarySciencyStuff. Appeal to authority doesn’t work for me, folks.

    — paleotn    Aug 15, 11:42 AM    #

25. Jeff – What specifically in the research was poorly done? What are the flaws? Like they use to say in the old west, “put up or shut up.”

    — paleotn    Aug 15, 11:51 AM    #

26. paleotn, I will be happy to outline a number of flaws. First, this is a correlational study, and not an experiment. With a correlational study you cannot claim causation. The people who are using these DVDs may differ in some important ways. For example, maybe people that use DVDs extensively do so to avoid interacting with their children and as such neglect them even when they are not watching DVDs. Second, this study relies on self-reports from third party observers. Although these observers are parents, they did not test children’s vocabulary, they asked parents about their children’s vocabularies. As was mentioned in the Disney letter, they did not differentiate on the content of the DVDs. It seems unfair to lump a teletubbies type program in with a DVD specifically designed to teach vocabulary. I could go on, but hopefully you can see from these examples, a general sweeping assessment that they don’t work has very weak support.

    — Jeff    Aug 15, 02:16 PM    #

27. Most especially for Disney, “put up or shut up.”

    — John    Aug 15, 02:31 PM    #

28. Jeff, your objections are reasonable, and as a neuroscientist I am now going over this paper carefully. It may be hard to rule out the idea that the DVD-watching group is somehow different.

    However, there is a larger picture issue that you are missing. There is no positive evidence that showing these videos to infants does any good! The marketing is based in part on the myth of the Mozart effect, in which it is commonly believed that playing classical music to babies (or infants, or children) somehow helps their development.

    It turns out that the Mozart effect is a myth. It started off as a study done on college students. The test was never done on children, and indeed could not even be reproduced in students. The idea has taken root and people believe it, probably including many of the readers of this site.

    On the other hand, there is good evidence that at a later age, active learning of a musical instrument is correlated with improved cognitive development. A possible general lesson is that actively experienced sensation is good for development.

    I think thr finding must be troubling to parents who thought they were helping their babies. Some consolations are that this is one study and the negative effect may be small and perhaps even reversible. In any case, as RM points out, many factors go into child development; one of the largest is finding lots of real live stimulation for your child.

    — Sam Wang    Aug 15, 05:10 PM    #

Previous: Deadly Prank Kills Bradley U. Student in House Fire
Next: $2-Million in Grants Will Foster Work on Digital Technologies in Student Life