NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Fueling recent criticism of
educational DVDs for toddlers, a new study finds that kids do
not improve language skills after viewing one such product, the
Baby Wordsworth from the Walt Disney Company's Baby Einstein
series. While The Baby Einstein Company does not explicitly make
educational claims, it notes on its web page that the Baby
Wordsworth DVD is a "playful introduction to words and sign
language." The new study, published in the Archives of
Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, put the DVD to the test in a
group of one- and two-year-olds. For six weeks, 88 children were
randomly assigned to either watch it a few times a week or not
at all. Researchers then tested the language skills in each
group based on how many words the kids knew according to their
parents and how well they did in a lab test. At the end of the
period, toddlers who had watched the DVD fared no better than
those who hadn't. Children in both groups understood about 20 of
the 30 words highlighted in the DVD, o