Smarter toys, smarter tots?

Videos for children who can't yet follow a story line generally use a formula of bright colors, real animals, simple words, and, of course, classical music. This reporter tested one video featuring seals and other underwater creatures splashing toward the camera. The 2-year-old boy on the unofficial testing couch sat quietly, to his mother's delight. Minutes later, he smiled, pointed, and tried to say the names of what he saw.

"There's something about them that works," says Turner, the producer for Baby Einstein. "Otherwise it wouldn't spread."

There may be other reasons why parents spend $2.8 billion per year on toys for infants and preschoolers. By buying the perceived brain boosters, parents may hope to ease their own fears in a success-oriented world.

"This sort of speaks to parents' insecurity," editor Bain says. "They want to give their kids every advantage they can.... We live in a very competitive society and children are a way that people compete, unfortunately. It's very easy to get drawn into that, even if there is no evidence."

Toy sellers also feel a weight on their consciences, although their dilemma is whether to sell a popular product of dubious educational value.

Nancy Streeter, for instance, owns the Eureka toy store in Newburyport, a specialty shop for educational toys. She stocks some hot sellers: the Baby Bach DVD and the Baby Shakespeare video. But she refuses "on principle" to sell compact discs or cassette tapes that hang in a crib and teach a child hour after hour to speak French or German. She describes such products as "overboard," though parents continue to ask for them.

Where Ms. Streeter struggles is in selling flashcards with pictures of animals or plants on one side and names on the other. She stocks them, and parents buy them. Yet she asks herself, when does the desire to educate become overkill, even detrimental?

"Flashcards for an infant?," she asks. "I can't image flashing cards at a 6-month-old. Take them for a walk. Let them see a real flower."

Researchers will never know for sure whether a particular product or type of learning actually increases intelligence, according to Northwestern University psychologist David Uttal. That's because the variables involved can never be isolated sufficiently to draw conclusions. Babies learn from all their stimuli, he says, so to say one product can have a superior effect will always be a matter of speculation.

"It's not a serious area of research," Dr. Uttal says, "because no one will ever know."

In the meantime, experts caution against an unfettered notion that the products "can't hurt." Bain and Lazar, for instance, warn that overdependence on videos to keep toddlers occupied can deprive them of the human interaction that forms the bedrock of their learning.

As long as parents use the so-called brain enhancers as entertainment and as a tool to aid interaction with other people, experts welcome their presence in the marketplace. But they may never be comfortable with the innuendo portending future success.

"Babies learn not from the video, but from you watching it with them," Bain says. "So parents should relax. Enjoy time with your baby. They're learning from everything around them."

Page: 1 | 2 | 3