Extensive Television Viewing and the Development of Attention and Learning Difficulties During Adolescence

Jeffrey G. Johnson, PhD; Patricia Cohen, PhD; Stephanie Kasen, PhD; Judith S. Brook, EdD Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2007;161(5):480-486. (Vol. 161 No. 5, May 2007))) Objective To investigate the association of television viewing with educational and intellectual outcomes during adolescence and early adulthood. Design Prospective epidemiological study. Setting Families participating in the Children in the Community Study, a prospective longitudinal investigation, were interviewed at mean offspring ages 14, 16, and 22 years. Participants A community-based sample of 678 families from upstate New York. Main Exposures Television viewing, attention difficulties, learning difficulties, and educational achievement during adolescence and early adulthood. Main Outcome Measures The Disorganizing Poverty Interview and age-appropriate versions of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children. Results Frequent television viewing during adolescence was associated with elevated risk for subsequent attention and learning difficulties after family characteristics and prior cognitive difficulties were controlled. Youths who watched 1 or more hours of television per day at mean age 14 years were at elevated risk for poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-term academic failure. Youths who watched 3 or more hours of television per day were the most likely to experience these outcomes. In addition, youths who watched 3 or more hours of television per day were at elevated risk for subsequent attention problems and were the least likely to receive postsecondary education. There was little evidence of bidirectionality in the association of television viewing with attention and learning difficulties. Conclusion Frequent television viewing during adolescence may be associated with risk for development of attention problems, learning difficulties, and adverse long-term educational outcomes. Author Affiliations: Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (Drs Johnson, Cohen, and Kasen) and Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine (Dr Brook), New York.

Attention problems linked to violence in kids' TV: study

Risk only increased for children under 3
Last Updated: Monday, November 5, 2007 | 1:18 PM ET
The Associated Press

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Share 0 Email Internal Links Early exposure to TV violence bad for kids: study Researchers split over TV, violence ties External Links Associations Between Content Types of Early Media Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems (Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window) Children's TV shows Arthur and Barney are OK for toddler viewing but not Rugrats and certainly not Power Rangers, suggests a new U.S. study. For every hour a day that children under three watched violent child-oriented entertainment, their risk doubled for attention problems five years later, according to the study released Monday in November's issue of the journal Pediatrics. The University of Washington researchers called a show violent if it involved fighting, hitting people, threats or other violence that was central to the plot or a main character. Shows listed included Power Rangers, Lion King and Scooby Doo. Even non-violent shows like Rugrats and The Flintstones carried a still substantial although slightly lower risk for attention problems, according to the researchers. On the other hand, educational shows, including Arthur, Barney and Sesame Street had no association with future attention problems. The researchers said the risks only seemed to occur in children under three, perhaps because that is a particularly crucial period of brain development. Those results echo a different study in October that suggested TV-watching has less impact on older children's behaviour than on toddlers. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television for children younger than two and limited TV for older children. Shows with fighting, hitting seen as violent Previous research and news reports on TV's effects have tended to view television as a single entity, without regard to content. But "the reality is that it's not inherently good or bad. It really depends on what they watch," said pediatrics professor Dimitri Christakis, who co-authored the study with researcher Frederick Zimmerman. Their study involved a nationally representative sample of 967 children whose parents answered government-funded child-development questionnaires in 1997 and 2002. Questions involved television-viewing habits in 1997. Parents were asked in 2002 about their children's behaviour, including inattentiveness, difficulty concentrating and restlessness. The researchers acknowledged it is observational data that only suggests a link and isn't proof TV habits cause attention problems. Still, they said they think the connection is plausible. The shows considered violent and other kids' programs that don't include violence also tend to be very fast-paced, which may hamper children's ability to focus attention, Christakis said.

Shows with violence also send a flawed message, namely "if someone gets bonked on the head with a rolling pin, it just makes a funny sound and someone gets dizzy for a minute and then everything is back to normal," Christakis said. Dennis Wharton of the National Association of Broadcasters, a trade association for stations and networks including those with entertainment and educational children's TV shows, said he had not had a chance to thoroughly review the research and declined comment on specifics. Wharton said his group believes "there are many superb television programs for children and would acknowledge that it is important for parents to supervise the media consumption habits of young children." When considering the parent questionnaires, the researchers took into account other factors that might have influenced the results, including cultural differences and parents' education levels, and still found a strong link between the non-educational shows and future attention problems. Peggy O'Brien, senior vice-president for educational programming and services at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said violence in ads accompanying shows on commercial TV might contribute to the study results. She said lots of research about brain development goes into the production of educational TV programming for children and the slower pace is intentional. "We want it to be kind of an extension of play," rather than fantasy, she said. The Canadian Press, 2007

TV, Video Games May Increase Attention Problems

By Psych Central News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on July 5, 2010

Kids who spend more time than their peers watching television or playing video games appear to be at greater risk for problems related to attention. Those children who exceeded the recommended amount of 2 hours per day of combined video games and TV viewing were nearly twice as likely to have above average attention problems.

There isnt an exact number of hours when screen time contributes to attention problems, but the AAP recommendation of no more than two hours a day provides a good reference point, said Edward Swing, an Iowa State psychology doctoral candidate and lead researcher in the study. Most children are way above that. In our sample, childrens total average time with television and video games is 4.26 hours per day, which is actually low compared to the national average. The researchers assessed 1,323 children in third, fourth and fifth grades over 13 months, using reports from the parents and children about their video game and television habits, as well as teacher reports of attention problems. Another group of 210 college students provided selfreports of television habits, video game exposure and attention problems. Previous research had associated television viewing with attention problems in children. The new study also found similar effects from the amount of time spent with video games. It is still not clear why screen media may increase attention problems, but many researchers speculate that it may be due to rapid-pacing, or the natural attention grabbing aspects that television and video games use, Swing said. Douglas Gentile, an associate professor of psychology at Iowa State University, reports that the pace of television programming has been quickened by the MTV effect. When MTV came on, it started showing music videos that had very quick edits cuts once every second or two, Gentile said. Consequently, the pacing of other television and films sped up too, with much quicker edits. He says that quicker pace may have some brain-changing effects when it comes to attention span. Brain science demonstrates that the brain becomes what the brain does, Gentile said. If we train the brain to require constant stimulation and constant flickering lights, changes in sound and camera angle, or immediate feedback, such as video games can provide, then when the child lands in the classroom where the teacher doesnt have a million-dollar-per-episode budget, it may be hard to get children to sustain their attention. The study showed that the effect was similar in magnitude between video games and TV viewing. Based on the studys findings, the researchers conclude that TV and video game viewing may be one contributing factor for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. Swing points out that the associations between attention problems and TV and video game exposure are significant, but small. It is important to note that television or video game time cannot solely explain the development of attention problems, he said. Clearly other factors are involved. The researchers plan to continue studying the effects of screen time on attention. They also hope future research can identify what aspects of television or video games may be most relevant to attention problems. Two hours per day of screen time is the recommendation made by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Their study will be published in the August print issue of Pediatrics available online on July 5. Source: Iowa State University
APA Reference News Editor, P. (2010). TV, Video Games May Increase Attention Problems. Psych

Central. Retrieved on December 30, 2011, from http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/07/05/tv-video-games-may-increaseattention-problems/15331.html

Attention Problems Among Video Gamers

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 23, 2009

The epidemic of attention deficit problems has led experts to review activities that appear to be related to the disorder. Excessive couch-behavior watching television and playing video games for an extended period has often been viewed as a potential culprit. A new study supports this viewpoint as Iowa State researchers discovered high volume action video game players those who play around 40 hours per week actually had more difficulty keeping focused on tasks requiring longer, more proactive attention than those who played video games less than a couple of hours a week. The study, published online this week in the latest issue of the professional journal Psychophysiology, also supports research published within the last year establishing a positive association between being addicted to playing video games and having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Our thinking right now is the sort of real world effect that you might be seeing is that these are individuals who would really have difficulty trying to maintain their attention independently over time, said Rob West, one of the studys authors, an associate professor of psychology and director of the cognitive psychology program at Iowa State. So if theyre engaged in some activity that doesnt really capture their attention like maybe a classroom lecture, or studying in a quiet space theyre going to have difficulty maintaining attention on their own. ISU psychology graduate student Kira Bailey led the study. The authors also included Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson, director of Iowa States Center for

the Study of Violence, who was recently chosen as one of the three 2010 American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientist Lecturers. In the study, data was collected from 51 Iowa State undergraduate men (ages 18 to 33) who were nearly evenly divided between those who reported playing less than a couple of hours of video games per week, and those who played video games an average of 43 hours per week. We were not actually measuring the most extreme ends, West said. There were people who we were unable to recruit and have data for who have higher rates than 43 hours per week. So this is probably on the high end, but its certainly not the highest. You get some undergrads self-reporting that theyre playing 9 or 10 hours a day. Electrical activity in each subjects brain was recorded through EEGs from their scalp while they were engaged in the computer Stroop Task a standard measure used to determine attention. In the task, individuals identified the color of a word when the color and word matched, or did not match. It takes longer to indicate the color when the word does not match. The study found that reactive attention control described as happening just in time was similar in the two groups of gamers. But brain wave and behavioral measures of proactive attention were significantly diminished in the frequent video game players. Its not clear what the effects would be if we tested people who were playing 10 or 20 hours a week, West said. So we dont know if its a graded effect or threshold effect like maybe 10s OK, but 20s not. We dont have those kinds of data yet. As you can imagine, this study could have implications for classroom and work performance for those people who play a lot of video games, he added. West says that the results of this study contrast with research published over the last six years that has found beneficial effects of action video game play on some aspect of visual processing. High volume gamers reactions to stimuli that appear very quickly had been found to be enhanced by playing action video games in those studies. The researchers are collecting data for another study that extends on this research and explores working memory in video game players keeping information in mind for 10 or 20 seconds. Theyre also exploring whether non-gamers produce the same attention results as those found in frequent players when theyre asked to play action video games for approximately 10 to 20 hours over several sessions. Source: Iowa State University
APA Reference Nauert PhD, R. (2009). Attention Problems Among Video Gamers. Psych Central. Retrieved on December 30, 2011, from http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/10/23/attention-problems-among-videogamers/9130.html