Dev Psych Final

A Critical Analysis of Heather Kirkorian’s “The Impact of Background Television on Parent-Child Interaction”

Jacienta Paily
(N12495842)

Developmental Psychology
Prof. Athena Vouloumanos
December 05, 2010

It is a well known fact, especially in Western society, that young children need loving and caring parents to aid in the growing process. We are slowly learning that the merepresence of parents, although certainly important, does not solely produce optimum conditions for development. Rather, children flourish when parents are actively involved in their children’s play and other activities. Television, a necessary modern day commodity, could serve as audiovisual distracters that could in principle, disrupt young children’s ongoing behavior. Because interacting with a childis a complex activity requiring a parent’s strong attention, Kirkorian (2009), in a recent study, has hypothesized that television, may reduce the quality of that interaction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of background television on the quantity and quality of parent-child interaction. Fifty-one young children with their parents were observed for 1 hr of free play witheither half an hour of a television program playing in the background or no TV at all. After the sessions were videotaped and subsequently coded for several interactive behaviors, the results showed that background television reduces overall interactions, due to a reduction in parents’ active engagement. Kirkorian concluded that television is negatively correlated with parental responsiveness andcan possibly lead to hindered child development.
The question asked in the article was very sensible: Does background television affect parent-child interaction? The question not only addresses an incredibly important issue that most parents care deeply about, but is one that is very reasonable to study. The study hypothesized that background television does in fact negatively affectinteractions between parents and their young children. Thus, it was very important that the method used compared parent-child interaction with and without the presence of background television. Kirkorian had two groups in her study, one in which the television was on for half the time, and one in which there was no television on. To ensure there was no bias mind analyzing the results, the study used outsidecoders who looked at videotapes of their interaction and rated the parent and child behavior on many different levels.
However, certain flaws question the legitimacy of the findings. The parents and their children were introduced to a novel family room and asked to act as they would normally do. In this case, discrepancies between a natural environment versus a laboratory environment are verysignificant. It is particularly important to determine whether observations in homes would yield the same findings as laboratory studies. This need is exemplified by the present finding that parents’ active involvement with their children decreased over time regardless of whether the television was on. It is possible that parents were initially extraordinarily attentive to their children in thenovel laboratory setting while being observed. This inference is further supported by the fact that there was a very noticeable video camera in the room. The presence of a video camera could have definitely caused exaggerated attention to the child that would not normally happen. In their own homes, however, parents are likely to become involved in other activities.
This study also failed todiscriminate between background television and simple distraction. It could be that the parents in the TV case were just distracted by the next most interesting thing in the room to the child. Was it specifically the television program that caused them to be less verbally responsive or just the fact that it was a distraction? It is certainly plausible to infer that that any distraction would cause a...