Sociology 8th Edition by Margaret Andersen ,Howard Taylor ,Kim Logio

Exercise 2

The "Baby Einstein" Program: A Farce?
Research Methodology: Several years back (starting in 1997), the Baby Einstein program, acquired by Disney Productions in 2001, advertised that it could greatly increase language development and other skills (the dependent variables) by subjecting very young children (two years old or younger) to the various toys, flash cards, DVDs, and books they marketed.
Research Question and Hypothesis: The claim was that such exposure would produce earlier and better language development, comparing a sample of infants before exposure to several months after exposure. The implication was that exposure to this Baby Einstein program would result in faster and better language development than that in infants not exposed to the program. After all, what could be more obvious? Of course early exposure to the program would result in better language development than would non exposure to the program. How could the results possibly be otherwise? Thousands upon thousands of parents with high hopes purchased the Baby Einstein products.
Research Results: This example shows precisely why doing research is so important! Several years after the Baby Einstein program was begun, anxious parents began contacting the founders of the program and telling them that their infants were not responding well to the Baby Einstein DVDs, flash cards, and so on. Furthermore, two University of Washington professors discovered that, in fact, children exposed to the program and its gadgets had actually slowed down their language development relative to children who had not been in the program. In addition, children exposed to the program revealed greater attention deficit afterward.
Retest and Conclusions: As a test for these observations, experimental as well as control conditions for children, matched on age, were created, and measures of (dependent variables) language development, reading speed, attention span, and other dependent variables were carried out over time. As it turns out, the findings disproved what "obvious common sense" told us; namely, the experimental group babies (the Baby Einstein conditions) performed less well on these dependent variables than did babies in the control conditions (those not exposed to the program)!
Implications: These results were upsetting to the original founders of the program, including Disney Productions. Presently, there are class-action lawsuits being brought against Disney Productions on the grounds that the "Baby Einstein" materials were fraudulent and not educational, as they were initially advertised. Furthermore, the American Academy of Pediatrics has since recommended that children younger than two years of age not be exposed to the kinds of DVDs and videos marketed by Baby Einstein.
Do you think that the failure of the original Baby Einstein program might have been in part because of the extremely young age of the tested infants? How might one correct for this in a new study?