A recently published study from the United States suggests that infants learn relatively little from DVDs which purport to teach them words. 

The article, "Do Babies Learn From Baby Media?", was published in the journal of the Association of Psychological Science. It concludes that children who viewed DVDs learned relatively little compared with those whose parents spent time trying to teach them similar content.

The research study comprised 72 babies aged 12 to 18 months old. The children were divided into four groups which either viewed or did not view a popular DVD several times a week over four weeks. The four groups consisted of:

• video with interaction in which parent and child watched the DVD together
• video with no interaction in which the child watched the video alone
• parent teaching in which neither saw the video and the parent was asked to try and teach their children a list of 25 words in a natural way
• a control group which had no intervention

Interestingly, the research also found that there was a correlation between how much a parent liked the DVD and how much they believed their child had learned from it.

To read the full research article visit the Association of Psychological Science website.