The debate on screen time: An empirical case study in infant-directed video

This chapter presents data on how infants interact with educational videos, collected using sensitive eye-tracking measures of attention. It describes the ongoing Toddler Attentional Behaviours and Learning with Touchscreens (TABLET) Project, developed by Annette Karmiloff-Smith with Rachael Bedford and Tim J. Smith. The chapter presents some detailed empirical work that illustrates the kinds of methods Annette believed were needed to ground an evidence-based approach to understanding the impact of screen time on infant development. Annette was a great pragmatist who understood the importance of working with parents, media producers, and policy-makers, to find the best ways for infants to benefit from scientific insights into development. She decided to collaborate with Abbey Media to develop infant-directed DVD content designed specifically with infant cognitive research in mind. TABLET is ongoing project aiming to test whether infant exposure to touchscreen devices at 12 months-of-age is associated with long-term developmental differences at 18 and 42 months-of-age in domains including attention, temperament, developmental milestones, language, executive function and sleep.