Child's brain when reading a book and watching a cartoon

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Today's parents, nannies and teachers face a choice of how to fulfill this request. You can read a book, watch a cartoon, listen to an audiobook, or even ask the voice assistant about it - Siri or Alex.

A recently published study looks at what's going on in your child's brain in each of these situations. According to one of the researchers, Professor John Hutton, there is “the Mashenka effect from Three Bears”: some of these ways of telling a fairy tale “not in size” to a small child, but some just right.

Professor Hutton is studying the origins of the formation of the ability to read and write. In this study, 27 children, about 4 years of age, underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they were introduced to a fairy tale. They were offered 3 ways: an audiobook, a picture book with soundtrack, and a cartoon. While the children listened / read / watched the fairy tale, the tomograph scanned the work of certain areas of the brain and their connectivity (a term in neuroscience, meaning the interaction of various connections and structural elements of the brain - Ed.).

“Our research was based on an idea of which areas of the brain are involved in the encounter with a fairy tale,” explains Hutton. The first is speech centers. The second is the area of visual perception. The third is responsible for visual images. The fourth is the so-called network of the passive mode of the brain, which is responsible for internal reflection and imparting meanings and meanings to something.

The network of a passive mode of brain operation includes parts of the brain that are activated when a person is not required to actively concentrate on a task, since the action has been repeatedly tested and brought to automatism.

To use Hutton's term “The Three Bears Mashenka Effect,” this is what the researchers found:

• When children listened to an audiobook, there was an activation of the speech centers, but overall connectivity was low. "This meant the content was difficult for the children to understand."
• When watching a cartoona high activation of the zones of auditory and visual perception was observed; however, under these conditions, the functional connectivity was significantly lower. “The speech centers were hampered,” says Hutton. “We interpret this as the fact that the cartoon does all the work for the child. Children spent most of their energy just trying to figure out what the cartoon was about. " The child's understanding of the fairy tale plot in this case was the weakest.
• Picture bookwas for the child's brain what Hutton called "just right."

When children see illustrations, the activity of the speech centers is slightly reduced compared to when they listen to audiobooks. In this case, the child concentrates not only on words, but also uses pictures as clues to better understand the story.

"Give them a picture and they'll have something to work on," Hutton explains. "Whereas when watching a cartoon, a fairy tale literally falls on the child, and he does not need to work at all."

It is especially important that while the child read a picture book, the researchers saw an increased level of connectivity in all areas of the brain studied in this experiment: speech centers, areas of visual perception, areas responsible for imagination and networks of the passive mode of the brain.

“In children aged 3-5, the areas of the brain that are responsible for the imagination and the passive mode of the brain mature later, and they need practice to integrate with the rest of the brain,” explains Hutton. "Excessive viewing of cartoons can interfere with this process."

When we read books to children, they work harder than we can see. "Because of this, they train the 'muscles' that make the pictures in their heads come to life."

Prof Hutton worries that in the long term, "children who watch too many cartoons are at risk of not integrating properly in their brains." A child's brain, overloaded with the need to understand the language without sufficient practice, does not cope well with the task of forming a mental image of what has been read and comprehending the content of a fairy tale. This makes the child a reluctant to read, as his brain is not well prepared to receive what a book can provide.

An important note: due to the limitations of the fMRI method, which requires lying still, scientists in this case were not able to fully recreate the natural conditions when a child watches and listens to a fairy tale with pictures on the lap of mom or dad.

In the experiment, there was no emotional connection and tactile contact, explains Professor Hutton. And also there was no so-called "dialogical reading", which assumes that the one who reads points the child to unfamiliar or unusual words or says "find me a cat in the picture." This is a whole separate layer in the formation of reading skills.

Of course, in an ideal world, we are always there to read a book to a child. But this is not always the case, and the results of this small study suggest that if parents do choose an electronic device, then the simplest version of an e-book with pictures should be preferred over a cartoon or audiobook.