[troutman]

I don't know if those kids are really reading, or have just memorized the cards.

Your Baby Can Read - Not!

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=569

I have received numerous questions recently regarding the latest infomercial craze called Your Baby Can Read. This is a program that promises to teach infants and toddlers how to read, giving them a jump start on their education.

In general, studies of neurological development and education show that forcing kids to learn some task before their brains are naturally ready does not have any advantage. You cannot force the brain to develop quicker or better. In fact, it seems that children need only a minimally stimulating environment for their brain development program to unfold as it is destined to.

The Your Baby Can Read program is an extreme whole word appraoch. Infants and toddlers are taught to memorize words, which they can then recognize and name from memory, even before they can understand what they are reading. Critics of this approach claim that this is not really reading, just memorization and association. Some even caution that by taking an extreme whole word approach, phonic understanding can be delayed and the net result can be negative.

Others are critical of this entire approach of forced learning at a very young age. It is more productive, they argue, to give the child a loving supportive environment and let their brain develop as it will. You are far better off spending your time playing with and bonding with your child than engaged in drills or having them sit in front of a video.

There also does not appear to be any evidence that programs like Your Baby Can Read have any long term advantage.

While the background concepts are quite interesting, the bottom line is that we have another product being marketed to the public with amazing claims and no rigorous scientific evidence to back them up. This product also falls into the broader category of gimicky products claiming to make children smarter or more successful academically.

Anxious parents wanting to give their kids every advantage is a great marketing demographic, in that they are easily exploited


Dr. Novella is an academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine. He is the president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society. He is also the host and producer of the popular weekly science podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe.