The effect of background television on attention and learning in 3-year-old children

Abstract

The impact of background television on attention and learning activities (reading a book and assembling a puzzle) was investigated in the present study. In the presence of background television, three-year-olds looked off-task more frequently and for a greater duration than preschoolers who did not experience the background television, indicating that background television distracted the three-year-olds from the tasks. However, the presence of background television did not influence all measures of performance; only one out of the four measures of performance (verbal recall of story detail) suffered in the presence of background television. Additional variance in task performance was explained by executive functioning. Overall, the study gives some insight into the effect of background television on three-year-olds' performance.