SpongeBob and 4-Year-Olds

The following report in the journal Pediatrics caught my attention: “The Immediate Impact of Different Types of Television on Young Children's Executive Function.” What first drew my interest was the implication in the title that young children apparently hold functional positions in the Executive Branch of our government. Perhaps Malia and Sasha? But as I read the summary of the report, I learned that the study concerned the relative effects of fast-paced TV shows on pre-schoolers’ “executive function” (pediatric jargon for “self-regulation, working memory,” or more generally, attention span). The researches divided a group of 60 four-year-olds into three groups of 20 each. One group watched an episode of the fast-paced (11 seconds per scene change) SpongeBob SquarePants for nine minutes, while the second group watched a slower-paced (34 seconds per scene change) PBS program Caillou for nine minutes, and the third group were given paper and crayons and told to free-draw for nine minutes. Following the nine minutes, each group was given a series of tests to measure their executive function, ”including the classic delay-of-gratification and Tower of Hanoi tasks” (whatever those are). The results were as you might expect: “Children who watched the fast-paced television cartoon performed significantly worse on the executive function tasks than the children in the other 2 groups.” Of course, there are questions lingering over the study – 60 children (not diverse) is not a sufficient sample to draw broad conclusions; the target audience for SpongeBob is six-ten-year-olds, not four-year-olds; what correlation is their between short-term effects on attention span (or executive function) and overall brain development; and maybe a fast-paced information culture is the world we (or at least the youngest among us) are headed into, so this could work as an advantage in the future rather than a drawback. At least this study does raise the questions and perhaps can lead to additional, more comprehensive, longitudinal studies.

But as I was reading about the study, it struck me that several years ago I wouldn’t have bothered to read about the study at all. But my interest now comes from my having a soon-to-be four-year-old granddaughter (and a second grandchild expected in the next couple of weeks). And as I think back over the past several years, I’ve probably read dozens of stories involving infants and young children, stories I wouldn’t have even finished reading the headlines four years ago. My students are always concerned most about reading what interests them. “This is boring” or “This isn’t interesting” are common complaints I regularly hear each semester. The lesson I attempt to instill is that there are no readings that are inherently “boring” or “uninteresting”; you might be bored or uninterested in an article or essay, but that doesn’t make it boring or uninteresting. Interest in anything resides in the reader (or viewer or listener). And the source of interest is that which most directly relates to the reader’s immediate personal life. It’s a lesson I not only have to remind my students of, but one I have to continually remind myself of as well.