Bob Iger Argues for Baby Einstein’s Merits

Just saw this on DIS News: The Walt Disney Company is demanding that University of Washington retract its Baby Einstein study. From Bob Iger’s letter:

The study fails to account for, let alone assess, the interactive nature of products such as Baby Einstein, seemingly dismisses the importance of interactivity as a factor by assuming without proof that interaction is equally important regardless of content design, and then undermines even that unproven assumption by conceding that the study “cannot capture the quality of [parent-child] interactions, which surely vary.”

While it is indisputable that children develop at different rates and differ in their innate abilities, there is no attempt to control for these differences which are particularly important in the sample of younger babies.

Iger would seem to be agreeing with Sarah, who posted yesterday on my blog that the results of the University of Washington survey just suck.

My scientific mind would like to see more studies. As a parent, my gut feeling and anecdotal experience say that talking to your kids is a more effective way to teach them language than any other method (surely that’s how evolution should have set things up here). Don’t go thinking that this means I didn’t let my kid watch Sesame Street videos though . . . I can sing Ernie’s greatest hits with the best of ‘em.