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Kyanbu The Legend
09-13-2011, 01:08 AM
http://www.twincities.com/news/ci_18876745?source=rss

So there was a test conducted. where 2 groups of children, each 4 years of age. Were tested under 3 conditions. One group watched nine minutes of spongebob, while another watch nine minutes of Caillou or drew for nine minutes.

Afterwards both groups took a mental function test. The spongebob group had the worst scores.

The conculsion? Spongebob will wreak your 4 year-old's brain in just under 9 minutes.

In there defense the test had multiple fail points, including the fact that the kids weren't tested before hand.

So... who else is having a hard time wraping their brain around this research proving that fast paced cartoon and 4-year-old viewers= dumber kid?

Even the researchers don't sound entirely too sure of the results.

Aerozord
09-13-2011, 01:18 AM
Judging by how this Caillou show is described, and drawing being an activity of creativity and coordination. Study seems less to say, Spongebob is bad, and more that the other things were good. I mean I doubt watching 9 minutes of anything will lower your IQ. But the benefits of activities designed to engage children should be obvious from the start.

Satan's Onion
09-13-2011, 02:39 AM
Just have them check back in another couple of decades, when the SpongeBob audience will be happy and productive citizens, and the kids forced to watch Caillou grow up to become serial arsonists and oven-cleaner huffers :crossarms: .

Seriously, I used to have to get up at ungodly early hours to get to school and that fucking show would be basically the only thing on. God, but the title character was just the whiniest little shit. Voice like nails on a blackboard, too.

Meister
09-13-2011, 02:47 AM
proving
lol

Krylo
09-13-2011, 02:51 AM
They've already done studies like this that show that media causes people to act in a way that is congruent to what they've seen, but the effects wear off after a short period of time. There's no evidence of lasting changes.

Meister
09-13-2011, 03:16 AM
The article is pretty typical sensationalist drivel. The study basically says "fast-paced TV, as opposed to slow-paced TV or self-paced activity, negatively impairs some cognitive skills in the short term" (which aren't the same as "mental function" or "intelligence" by a long shot), the article spins that into "SpongeBob may cause learning problems, scientists say," and Kyanbu spins that into "Study says SpongeBob makes kids dumb, scientists must have done it wrong."

Here's the actual study in question (pdf) (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/09/08/peds.2010-1919.full.pdf+html). It's a short read, give it a go and let's at least discuss the study itself rather than its crass misrepresentation.

Arhra
09-13-2011, 03:31 AM
Tiny sample size. No control group. No baseline tests. No follow-up tests.

Study invalid.

Arhra away!

Kyanbu The Legend
09-13-2011, 03:32 AM
Wow I was really way off there. Meh my mistake, to be honest I personally did not intend to take this seriously.

Toast
09-13-2011, 06:55 AM
Tiny sample size. No control group. No baseline tests. No follow-up tests.

Study invalid.

Arhra away!

Arhra hit the nail on the head. There were no baseline pre-tests. Drawing/coloring isn't a convincing control group. The sample size is very small. And the researchers assume that short term effects must mean long term effects. At least they admit that they don't know how long the effects persist.

There's also a line near the end that I laughed at.

In addition to the pacing, we speculate that the onslaught of fantastical events that was also present in the fast-paced show might have further exacerbated EF. Whereas familiar events are encoded by established neural circuitry,40 there is no such circuitry for new and unexpected events, which fantastical events often are. Encoding new events is likely to be particularly depleting of cognitive resources, as orienting responses are repeatedly engaged in response to novel events.

So apparently experiencing new and imaginative things is a bad thing now. I thought that was kind of the whole point of fictional media.

Meister
09-13-2011, 07:15 AM
It doesn't say anywhere "and this is a bad thing" though? All that paragraph is is a potential neurological explanation for the observed effect, clearly identified as speculative and in need of further research.

Toast
09-13-2011, 07:44 AM
The whole premise of the article is that fast paced tv shows hinder executive function (EF) and deplete cognitive resources, and that this is inherently a bad thing.

The paragraph I quoted, and I realize that they're speculating, puts forth the idea that fantastical elements further or contribute to the depletion of cognitive resources. Depletion of cognitive resources is defined by how well the child does on these very abstract tests. According to the paragraph, encoding new events depletes cognitive resources.

The part that doesn't make logical sense is that these are young children. Pretty much everything they do that isn't part of their daily routine is a new event. That's the way the brain works. Up until the mid-teens, the brain is making new neural connections like crazy. Around that time is when it begins to prune away unused neurons, finishing in the early twenties.

To bring it all together, fantastical elements are not significantly different enough from new experiences at this age that there would not be a significant difference, if one could be detected at all, in determining which had a greater effect. Further, that fantastical elements leads to cognitive depletion as shown by these abstract tests has poor generalizability. Cognitive depletion has a connotation of negativity, when what is more likely happening is a cognitive redirection towards imagination and not towards the completion of abstract tests for a total stranger.

Aerozord
09-13-2011, 03:37 PM
Plus how is developing resources to the fantastical a bad thing. Do these people have any idea how many scientific advances have been made because nerds were watching some sci-fi and went "Hey we should totally make that"

Bard The 5th LW
09-13-2011, 03:41 PM
I bet only one of those two groups had fun as well.

Magus
09-13-2011, 06:01 PM
Kids are probably moderately entertained by Caillou...though from what I can tell that Arthur cartoon I watched as a kid was all kinds of better.

Ecks
09-13-2011, 09:13 PM
Arthur was the coolest kid on the block. Except for his bunny friend who did what we all did when we had to write book reports and watched the movie instead.

Aerozord
09-13-2011, 09:42 PM
I think book reports are a bad idea, or rather the way the go about them is bad. It conditions kids to view reading as homework rather then legitimate source of entertainment.

Especially since most of the books they make you read suck. Unless you get a cool teacher that gives you Lord of the Rings. That was fun

Magus
09-13-2011, 10:24 PM
99% of the book reports I ever did, I got to choose the book. And so have 99.9% of the ones I've given kids to do.

I did have this one kid try to just copy the IMDB synopsis into the "plot" section of his book report. I printed out the IMDB page, highlighted the synopsis, stapled it to his report with a 0 and wrote, "Next time at least go on Rotten Tomatoes and find an obscure review from the Miami Herald."

Ah, pointless cruelty.

Aerozord
09-13-2011, 10:51 PM
we got more of an "approved reading list" type thing. Plus you have to introduce the kids to books worth reading first. Tossing a 5th grader into a library and telling him to find something, unlikely they will find something they enjoy

Meister
09-14-2011, 01:21 AM
Plus how is developing resources to the fantastical a bad thing. Do these people have any idea how many scientific advances have been made because nerds were watching some sci-fi and went "Hey we should totally make that"
It's... really not that kind of article. It's the documentation of a scientific method. You make it sound like it's an advice column in a parenting magazine saying "keep your kids away from fantasy things, especially Spongebob, or they'll never amount to anything."

Marc v4.0
09-14-2011, 03:58 AM
99% of book reports I did I copied from the blurb on the back of the book and it was never noticed.

God Bless America!

Kyanbu The Legend
09-14-2011, 04:05 AM
I failed or got a low passing grade on almost every book report I ever got during my 12 years of school.

Thinking back at it now, I'm shocked I passed any of those classes and astonished that I wasn't held back for it. And I actually watched only learning cartoons during my early childhood. I didn't discover cable till I was 8 maybe 9 years old. And we didn't get cable intill I was 11.

Man it's really hard to believe that being a bad student then really affected my life today. >_>;

Seil
09-14-2011, 10:31 AM
Isn't Spongebob all about sharing and jellyfishing and hanging out, and working hard and trying your best and being friendly?

So, even if it's been "proven" that a program lowers your kids IQ by a point or two, couldn't it be proven that it teaches good morals and life lessons?

BloodyMage
09-14-2011, 10:53 AM
Wouldn't that just suggest that morality is for idiots?

Seil
09-14-2011, 10:55 AM
Well if morality is for idiots, then I guess that I... Oh, I made myself sad.

I also woulda gone with: Some people agree with you.

Meister
09-14-2011, 10:59 AM
So, even if it's been "proven" that a program lowers your kids IQ by a point or two
which it hasn't

The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk
09-14-2011, 11:08 AM
Tiny sample size. No control group. No baseline tests. No follow-up tests.

Study invalid.

Arhra away!

What, you expect people to conform to the scientific method whenever they perform science?

HERESY!

Seil
09-14-2011, 11:18 AM
which it hasn't

Hence the quotation marks.

Aerozord
09-14-2011, 02:06 PM
It's... really not that kind of article. It's the documentation of a scientific method. You make it sound like it's an advice column in a parenting magazine saying "keep your kids away from fantasy things, especially Spongebob, or they'll never amount to anything."

not that I dont know this, scientists make no claims its conclusive. Actually I'm not entirely sure why they did it at all.

But you know if the media gets ahold of it, parenting advice, is exactly how they will spin it

Magus
09-14-2011, 09:12 PM
99% of book reports I did I copied from the blurb on the back of the book and it was never noticed.

God Bless America!

Your teacher must not have read it, since those synopses are usually written in a way that is easily recognizable. I usually read them, looking for odd turns of phrase that kids usually don't use. For example the one I talked about before used the turn of phrase "as is her way", which set off warning signals immediately. I then typed that sentence into Google. Bingo--IMDB synopsis for the movie.

In any case, the real loser is you, because you never realized how good that book was!

Unless it was Little Women or something. In which case lucky you.