Media and Attention, Cognition, and School Achievement Author(s): Marie Evans Schmidt and Elizabeth A. Vandewater Source: The Future of Children, Vol. 18, No. 1, Children and Electronic Media (Spring, 2008), pp. 63-85 Published by: Princeton University

This article was very thorough and I found the analysis of all the research interesting and informative. In the news recently were reports that even watching Baby Einstein videos is harmful to children. Harmful is a vague and scary word that the media uses to catch the attention of viewers. I appreciated how the authors considered research which focused on a variety of mediums, not just television, and how the research acknowledged many variables, not just time spent watched.
I was surprised by the research that reported a positive association (or no association at all) between TV viewing and achievement for children who are disadvantaged or have limited proficiency in English. The interpretation of these results as meaning that viewing TV provides cognitively enriching experiences for children who would otherwise have none or little seems valid to me. The likelihood that parents who do not provide cognitively enriching experiences for their children would encourage them to watch educational programs is not great. It seems to me that opportunity for the disadvantaged children to catch up to their peers might be lost.
Another interesting aspect of the article to me was the research on problem solving. It would be nice to think that students can watch problem solving occur on shows like Sesame Street and then be able to solve problems themselves. The authors state that the research provides mixed evidence. Children seem able to learn facts from television and replicate solutions when presented with similar problems as they observe, but 5 and 6-year-olds are unable to transfer the solution when presented with a new problem.
Finally, society likes to blame the prevalence of ADHD on electronic media, but the authors assert that there is very little research to support or refute the notion. There is research to support that children with ADHD do watch more television than their peers, but many reasonable explanations are provided for the increased viewing. Among them is that watching television is a low-conflict, low-stress activity for children and their parents to do together.