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Effects Of Children 's Television On Language Development Essay

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Nelson and Co. reported that children between the ages of two and five watched television on average 32 hours a week - an eight year high. Parents’ opinions on their children’s television viewing has contributed to this upward trend. In 2014, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center surveyed 1,557 parents of children between the ages of 2 and 10; they found that 44% of parents believed that children’s television enhanced learning. In addition, the center reported that 78% of parents of children between the ages of two and five believed that educational television improved their children’s language and cognitive development. The burgeoning years of language development are not only capricious and vulnerable in nature, but they are also easily influenced by external factors. Therefore, it is imperative to evaluate the effects of children’s television on language development. Children’s television negatively impacts language development because it impedes word acquisition, delays language acquisition and negatively affects literacy outcomes. Educational television negatively impacts language development because it hampers vocabulary acquisition. Vocabulary acquisition is characterized by an infant’s first words and word spurt (i.e., the rapid growth in a child’s vocabulary). Zimmerman, Christakis and Meltzoff (2007) investigated the relationship between media exposure and language development in children under two years of age. 1,008 parents of children between the ages of two months and

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