Arcim Perri blogs this nugget:
For every hour of television watched daily, two groups of children — ages 1 and 3 — faced a 10 percent increased risk of having attention problems at age 7. Unrealistically fast-paced visual images typical of most TV programming may alter normal brain development. “The newborn brain develops very rapidly during the first two to three years of life. It’s really being wired” during that time, Christakis said.
Pretty fascinating when you think about it – that a child’s brain isn’t ‘finished’ when it comes out of the oven. I’ve always read those studies about babies not having physical contact the first few weeks after birth have terrible growth rates – and this compliments that from the mental side. Though we watched a lot of TV growing up – it was mostly PBS. And Nature and Nova are a lot slower paced. And wasn’t there a study arguing this towards the end of life – where nuns that did crossword puzzles had significantly lower rates of Alzheimers. I remember the day my dad said that the brain is a muscle and you have to exercise it all the time.
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