Guernsey, L. (2007). Screen Time: How Electronic Media--From Baby Videos to Educational Software--Affects your Young Child. New York: Basic Books.
Note: This is the paperback edition of Into the Minds of Babes.
The only difference is the forward by Ellen Wartella and a 20 page epilogue by the author.
As a mother, Lisa Guernsey wondered about the influence of TV on her two
young daughters. As a reporter, she resolved to find out. What she
first encountered was tired advice, sensationalized research claims, and
a rather draconian mandate from the American Association of
Pediatricians: no TV at all before the age of two. But like many
parents, she wanted straight answers and realistic advice, so she kept
digging: she visited infant-perception laps and child development
centers around the country. She interviewed scored of parents,
psychologists, cognitive scientists, and media researchers, as well as
programming executives at Noggin, Disney, Nickelodeon, Sesame Workshop,
and PBS. Much of what she found flies in the face of conventional wisdom
and led her to conclude that new parents will be best served by
focusing on "the three C's": content, context, and the individual child.
Advocating
a new approach to TV and DVDs, Guernsey focuses on infants to
five-year-olds and goes beyond the headlines to explore what exactly is
"educational" about educational media. She examines how play and
language development are affected by background and foreground TV and
how to choose videos that are age-appropriate. She explains how to avoid
the hype of "brain stimulation" and focus instead on social
relationships and the building blocks of language and literacy. Along
the way, she highlights independent research on shows ranging from
Dora The Explorer to
Dragon Tales, and distills some surprising new findings in the field of child development.
(book description)